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