Or perhaps it won’t deserve a name

We never name the things we plan to kill you see

Since names make it that much harder to watch it die

So I guess I’m trying to kill this poem

Or the parts of me that still love you

Or the parts of me that can’t let go of you

Or the parts of me you said you loved

We are all just parts and pieces

Shards of broken hearts and scar tissue

Collecting over time and traumas

As if our stories were written before us

But you see, It doesn’t matter where this poem takes me

or which road it chooses to follow

What matters is the blood in my veins

The earth under my fingernails

The air swirling sonatas in my lungs

And all the sun sending warmth through the synapses of my circuit boards

I am alive at this moment

Heart pumping blood and steel

And not because of you.

I am alive because I let myself live

Because I haven’t finished this poem yet

Because I haven’t killed that part of me

Because some poems are worth reading

And because no matter how much my brain wishes me dead, I am a hopeless optimist.

Clinging to the chance that you ever loved me

Or the hope that someone will

Clinging to the hope that things will get better

Or the hope that I will

Love was never the music box I made it

Love was the snow we never saw together

A leather notebook with frayed binding

Filled with all the plans we made together

And though part of me wants to place it gently under my pillow and pray for winter

The other part would rather it be kindling for the next flame.

Because you see fires have a poetic way

A brutal, merciless, poetic way

Of erasing the past like tree trunks

Reminding us all that everything can be temporary

Just like I was to you.