Hi, mom. How have you been?

I collected in a box all the things I left behind,
things I didn’t know I missed 
when we parted ways last winter.
In a pile sat everything I’d tried so hard to hide
and I realized that I missed you despite how much our lives had splintered.
I told myself I made it up to forget how much we shared
to forget how you just swept me out like clips of cut off hair.
The nostalgia is enough to make me warm,
hell, it’s burning me alive 
and the constant indecisiveness that flips in my insides
is getting old 
and is monotonous 
like flipping channels on TV.
The blue light casts its hazy glow and yet there’s nothing new to see.
I wish I knew how to be the girl you thought I was.
I wished it everyday when I thought I was the cause
of why you left - I wished you hadn’t.
I wanted you to stay
and everyday you weren’t here I grew more and more afraid.
We’re both so selfish in the end.
Despite how hard we played
our parts like pianists and their dancers who master the ballet.
I had to leave just like you did
We’re the same cut after all.
I’ll still say sorry.
Please forgive me.
You make me feel two feet tall.
When I think of you without fail I’m a child once again,
just four years old, singing songs; days filled up with laughter,
not knowing of expiration dates or that there was ever an end 
to anything that wasn’t attached to Happily Ever After.
You should know you were my world.
-gorgeous even when you cried
but still we had to be apart to keep from being tied.
You’ve missed so much of what I think are changes that you’d love,
of me becoming a grown person I hope you’d be proud of.
I’m sorry that I don’t know how to be better than I am
but you shouldn’t have left at all when I was so unable to understand that when people get on airplanes they don’t always fly back.
Perhaps I should be thanking you ‘cause I learned while I was young 
that people leave just as fast as you think that people come.
To this day you were the biggest goodbye I’ve ever had to do.
Sometimes I still don’t know who I am ‘cause so much of me is you.
Now you’re just the remnants of a flame that once had burned so bright 
that illuminated every corner in the darkest of my nights;
and all that’s left is ashes and a fading trail of smoke
just like the ones that left your lips with every word you spoke.
Every time I think of lipstick stained on cigarettes
I’ll recycle the memories I locked away
and keep trying to forget.

 

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