Skipping Stones

I don’t understand how you can just stand there

Standing beside the river I cried

Skipping stones off my tears to watch how far they’ll go

As if my brokenness is a wishing well you have been waiting to use

since the day you met me.

Tossing coin after coin down the emptiness you carved

Like an ancient sculpture

Waiting for your dreams to come true

Ones in which I’m not with you anymore

Chasing the coins down

Getting darker and darker

To see how far I’ll go

How long I’ll keep holding on

Til my fingers are broke and bloody

And I don’t understand how you can be so cold

How the tears don’t freeze when you touch them

But maybe it’s the salt

Maybe it’s all the salt from my resentment

In my tears

In my eyes

And on my lips

And maybe that’s why it was so easy

To preserve our kisses.

Or to dry the tears again every time you said you didn’t love me

and you’d think I would have known better

That I would have done better

But loving you was a torture so sweet

Was a torture I called necessary

Because truthfully I didn’t know how not to

Because loving you was a battle cry

And we both know I was born a fighter

I had to be

Or I never would have made it out

Or I never would have made it this far

Or I never would have been here today

And I do love you

And I say those words too often

But I don’t regret it

I just regret all the tears I’ve cried since then

And if I could take them back

If I could dam the rivers

And block the estuaries of my grief

Just to collect the tears I cried over you

I’d drown you in them

Or maybe myself

To make all your dreams come true