The light in your eyes when you talked about her could light up the whole world for a million and one years

You hung onto every vowel and syllable that came out of her precious mouth
Captured every moment you had with her on a constant reel as if it would be your last

You heard a poem about how when it rains everything hits hard,

But, a bridge has the power to stop it
An unearthly silence washes over you for a mere second as the rain stops
You don’t question it
You know it will quickly end
You just enjoy it for the moment 
But when the bridge ends, the rain seems to hit harder than before

She was your bridge

She made life seem so perfect, despite how far fetched it and you may be
People said you were a screw up
That you couldn’t care about anything other than yourself
They weren’t wrong about you being a screw up
But – they were wrong about not being able to care about anything else other than yourself

Because you did
You cared about her more than life itself

You spent your entire existence trying to make her happy
All you wanted was to be the cause of her captivating smile
And the reason she laughed so hard she snorted
But it never seemed to happen

And it’s not that she couldn’t see it
Your feelings erupted like a volcano
It’s that she couldn’t believe it

She had been hurt before
And not the scrape on your knee type of hurt
The type of hurt that builds scar tissue

She seemed filled with life
Vivacious
But she was numb
Senseless

Her heart was a secret garden you wanted to grow in
But the walls were too tall and you couldn’t seem to find a door

You promised you wouldn’t hurt her

And she so desperately wanted to believe you
But when she was in the second grade her dad promised he would never hurt her
Now she can’t speak to her dad from all the pain he caused

And she so desperately wanted to believe you
But when she was in the seventh grade and her brothers friend said
“Trust me, I wouldn’t hurt you”
He tried to cross a line

So forgive her for the endlessly tall walls around her secret garden
She has learned that not all words are honest but all actions are

You said you wouldn’t hut her but your past showed a different story
So you can’t blame her for not believing the words you thought she wanted to hear

You thought you knew her
But if you really knew her you would know that there is no such thing as a door to her garden from the outside in

She’s sorry she led you to believe a dream that one day a door will appear
When she knows fully that is just a dream because you’re too much of a risk

She is a wildfire that you seemed to get caught up in
You never meant for her to mean that much to you
She never meant to drag you along

Your story came to a halt when she quickly vanished with no evidence that she was ever there
She was there for one moment, gone for the next
The lingering hope that one day soon your paths will cross again is what keeps you awake at night
Maybe next time, a door will exist