i remember

i remember that day
taking a picture for you that you never got
hearing the impatience in your voice: well maybe you could take a walk? and call me? it would be nice to actually hear your voice. could you do that?
and four days later, you wanted nothing to do with me.
and one year four months later, i don't know why.

(why do things have to end?
and once they end,
why can't they just end?
why do they stay with me?

i don't believe in happy endings,
just endings.)

i remember that day. the sun shone brilliantly.
i had not a care in the world, and no warning.
i was happy. looking back, i was foolish.
to accept such happiness without questioning it,
without leaving the seed of doubt in the dirt of my soul.
because i felt safe, i set aside my shield.
and i was all the more vulnerable when the pain came.
a pain that spared no cell in my body invaded
in the time it took for one tear to fall,
in three ragged breaths, in six words.

now i am neither living nor dead,
stuck in the picture from that day.
oh, to go back. to withhold. to refuse.
to have avoided this mess from the start.
but you were so convincing, so brave
and i believed you. oh, to have doubted,
to have stayed, to have never begun
and never had to fight and feel this ending.

{ w.w.b. }