i think about you most when i listen to ‘keep it like a secret’.
 


there was a week i kept playing

‘you were right’ too much.
 


like, sickening to the stomach repetition.

i didn’t even like the melody.

but they sounded like something

someone else might want to hear.
 


i would pick up the needle, put it down again

and then forget to even listen.
 


and to think of you in the vicinity of my bedroom.
 


ohh! the stupidity!

but still. i kept playing it.
 


and i kept thinking:
 


where am I?

am I happy?

on mondays i ran out, not for nothing,

just because my groans needed convincing

they were still mine.
 

i ran to tuesdays this time,

bought the dismemberment plan ep
with me

your last phone call, cut my wrist

while i stared at the first anniversary
 


trying to push you into my past.
 


(you’re the one. no, i’m the one.

wait, are we just both really regretting?)
 


and still thinking:
 


where are you now?

were you happy then?
 


the answer, of course,
 


is lost in the tension

and my poetry about you,

where you never were.

i was helpless, an upturned insect,
scrambling under a dark sky,

the weight of our worlds on my shoulders.
 


little earthquakes rattled our cages.
shaking us free.

but then thinking:
 


is this our time anxiety?

you told me it would never work

 
you texted me on New Year’s Eve

from another country,

I treated you like you were the only thing that mattered.
but the only that mattered was me,

…thinking what went wrong.

now it’s always cloudy in my house.
 


so you sent me sunshine.

from the stupid british sky, once mine.
 


it wasn’t much. but i told you,

if we stay here together,

we still couldn’t make it,
 


or anything else, ever!
 


you sent me your doubts every day.

i sent you a consolation.
 


but then, i was in line to check you out,

and you were gone again.
  


always somewhere

being generous to another who didn’t deserve it, which is your tragic talent.
 


maybe it was this tragedy
that turned things around, a light left on
 


for another day, another week, another month,

now gone more than 20 years.
 


then, another?

i daydream.

will i see you again, this time?
 


my knees creak now,

and i’m short of breath, like i know too much.
 


will you text me again at the next new year’s party?
 

why would you?

riding your own carousel,

dizzy, from too much time,
lost balance, praying like

my name remains a secret.
 


your text never arrives, except in that dream

my cotton candy daydream

that i wake from ,crying too hard.
 


you forced my confession.

as we forgot about regret:
 


you got old, but i never felt old.

yet you were the adult from the beginning.
 


kind even when i exhausted you.

you were patient, i was not, you were honest too.
 

we were gentle with each other for a while.

i thought i meant the things i said,
 


but you were right, sincerely.

sometimes i come home and imagine it all over again

reading old emails i shouldn’t,
 

i never wanted you to disappear forever.
i pretend i want all the time back again
 


spoiler alert: i do.
 


i picture you brushing your teeth.

your mouth full of foam, you nod. you say ‘hmm.’
 


you say nothing else.
 


a fine old dream of approval doesn’t make it all right.

 
 
our dependency became ironic

one pushed, the other pulled

at the same time until….
 


if i stir all this up
a
nd your fingers twitch to type,

does it mean anything, from the other side of the world?
 


my heart no longer melts so fast

and i’ve have a headache for the last 20 years.

i always think about you

when i remind myself.
 


play that melody again.

that sweet game again to get another.
 


just in case.
 


because you never said you loved me until it was too late,

but i knew you did.
 


you were always somewhere near me.

you just didn’t know how to arrive.
 


i think about all the things we might say one day

catching an old epping bus.
  


we’d be domestic, soft,

and hug with our bodies apart.
 


two people on diverged paths

and i’m still figuring out how we are not with
 


each other.

The format and inspiration for this write is taken from Maia’s awesome poem Sincerely, Yours Truly, which I urge you to read. I have adapted, paraphrased and in a couple of places, re-used some of her awesome words as they were. My work went in a different direction from hers and is based on, yet again, real-life events in a particular relationship that I still think about. As you can probably tell.
The old emails referred to are slowly being added here on the relevant dates but they only tell half the story, if even that.