Heartbeat Memory

I vaguely remember the few months after we stopped speaking,
After you decided that treading so carefully around that shattered piggy bank of
Unrequited feelings
Just
Wasn’t
Worth it.

It was surreal;
Everything moved as if under water.
I walked through those months,
Back and forth across that porcelain covered floor,
Until my feet were so cut up
That the blood flowed as
Tears through my eyes
And flooded my heart and brain.

I thought you were the sun,
And I was chasing you,
Stumbling through fields,
Just trying to keep you from disappearing over the horizon.
I didn’t realize that you were the seeds of the dandelions I had trampled,
Every footstep scattering you to the wind,
Further and further out of reach, and by the time I noticed,
The moon was rising, and it was too late to go back and look for
One
Last
Seed.

I was lost in that field,
With a million bare dandelion stems and the moon glowing above.
I had let you become my everything;
The breath I breathed,
The smiles I felt,
Every beating of my heart.

But I swore to never forget.
I promised to not let the feelings or memories slip away like you had,
Like sand through my fingers; to the ground and then back into the vast ocean.
And they didn’t.
I held onto those memories,
To all the feelings you had ever made me feel
Till they became cemented in my soul,
The extra weight that kept me grounded.

Little by little, though,
The weight lifted.
The cement began to erode,
And as much as I would try to hold on,
Each day I would wake up a little less owned by that one day in march,
Until the morning I rolled out of bed to find that you were only
A memory.

And you’re still every song I hear on the radio
And you’re still the what if going in circles on a Ferris wheel in my brain
And you’re still some of the weight that I carry.

But you are no longer every breath
Every smile
Every ache
Every heart beat.