angry breakup draft from 2008

I have never been good at goodbyes,

And because I believed
In true love, meant to be,
And the power of promises,
Watching you go was like
Grinding broken glass into my palms like
Crawling on shattered kneecaps like
The last gasp of air before drowning

I have never been good at goodbyes
And when you left
You took not only my today
And my tomorrows
But you took the shine off of
All that time when we said
That we loved each other.
You left me feeling like an accomplice
To your fraud like
An accessory after the fact.

But now that the hands of
Another man have cleansed
The residue of you from my skin,
I am banishing you from my sense memory,
Already forgetting
The sound of your voice on 2 a.m. phone calls when
You believed I was asleep,
The taste of harsh words left to linger
Too long on my tongue,
The scent of cheap liquor and desperation.
Already forgetting the feel of your
Teeth on my neck, and your
Fingertips sliding across my body,
As you played me for a fool.
I guess I never was tuned quite right.

Now, I only believe in the things I can see,
So I am determined to hold onto
The look in your eyes when you lied when
You told me you’d love me forever.
And I refuse to let go of
The shadow that stained your face when
You understood just how badly
You fucked up this time, when
You realized that
Everything we were, all our potential
Had fallen victim to your irresponsible
Irrepressible urges, when
You knew that
My shoulder would never again be
An appropriate repository for your tears.

I have never been good at goodbyes
I prefer see-you-laters or until-we-meet-agains,
But this time, I hope you’re never inspired
To crawl back to me, pleading
For forgiveness that was already granted.
The thought of allowing you to be
Reckless with me again
Is almost too absurd to entertain.
But although I know that I am strong like mountains,
You are persistent as water,
Able to wear away at my every surface.
Now that you’ve made your choice
I hope you stay gone.

You have showed me what a powerful tool
Self-delusion can be,
So I will comfort myself by imagining
That every time you take her in your arms
You die a little inside.
I will tell myself that you regret
Taking my love and filling the empty spaces
With anger, doubt and fear.
I will keep believing that there wasn’t anything
I could have done to prevent this.

I have never been good at goodbyes.
I always have to fight the urge to repress the truth;
To tell you only what it is I think
You want to hear.
I wish I could say that I hope she makes you happy
Instead, I will say that I hope together
You find everything you both deserve,
And if you think I just said the same thing
With different words then I know you’ve become
As good at lying
To yourself as you always were
At deceiving me.