10 months later

Today is September 28th, 2015.

I've been biting down on the abstract for about ten months now, writing poems about anonymous heartbreaks and platonic endings. I've been forging daydreams out of realities, and convincing myself that college math isn't the workout they swore it would be, and now my hours are rolling under my feet so fast you can almost hear the landslide.

Today is September 28th, 2015 and one year ago, I was cross-legged on a skinny bed in a farm town, halfway between creativity and depression, where the only laughter you know is between a phone screen and Aspirin. 

I was in easy love, 

romantic and faultless, enigmatic and spectacular. The kind of love where he'd drive two hours to take me to dinner, then drive two hours the other way.  Where every text had a response and every leg felt less like a marathon. 

Where our words bore no barriers.

Where the bushes were unbeaten.

Where he was he and I was me.

But today is September 28th.

2015.

I wear my stubbornness softer and my hair down more.

I've got last week on repeat, setting my frontal lobe on fire when I realized happiness doesn't come in a can but it's draining out my bank account. I've got last week on repeat, when his eyes caught flame and he spilled sarcasm all over the kitchen floor and 

everything was fine.

"Everything is fine."

I save those words til Monday rolls around.

Barriers are for leaping.

Bushes are for trimming.

He is he and I am me.

But we,

we are segregated souls on two different edges,

with scenery of two different kinds.

I can almost hear him saying, "I hope you're still around when I get back."

Well, I hope you hold your ground when I go black.

And I hope I hold my ground,

when the ground can't hold itself,

and oxygen becomes a figment of our imaginations.

I hope I hold my ground

when gravity grabs us both.

And I hope you don't cry when you read this.

I hope you don't.