Stay

When you're gone, I’ll read all the things I wrote about you, and for you, and never had the courage to admit even to myself.

When you’re gone, I’ll realize I have nothing to hold you in. The gifts were passed on and days were spent, not documented through forceful posing. And I will be completely adrift wondering if anyone has ever felt this way, if you would ever have felt this way.

People will not know what I am smiling at so sorrowfully nor recalling so keenly and questions will be just as futile as remedies, because all I’ll have left to say for myself is one name.

When you’re gone, you’ll take me with you. All the good things I wanted the world to know me as will be no longer be worth being anymore. I will not have peace because my sanity depended on yours to shelter mine.

When you’re gone, I will break. A thousand times and again and again with every belabored breath and without picking up the pieces, break again.

When you’re gone, all my dreams will turn into mocking nightmares and all my hopes into jeers. Nothing will ever be in reach or wanted with the same sincere abandon. There will be no reason. When you’re gone, there will be no outward sign of the wreck within, but the flags I raise will forever be of a sickened surrender to wherever life chooses to take me now.

And then every place, every song, every stray cloud on a grey evening will be a little jab in my ribs from the inside. When you’re gone, I’ll wish you had stayed, and I’ll be sorry.