You’ve got grass stains on your shirt and remnants in your hair.

I know you’ve been stargazing;

just wishing you could fly away and never feel the heavy thump of your broken heart when those three words buzz and flitter past your eardrum like a wounded butterfly.

It’s hard to know that you think of leaving when the only thing keeping me here is you.

I’d leave with you if my feet weren’t bound to the ground like tree roots.

I’d leave with you if my whole being didn’t linger over every beautiful word that is left unsaid, remaining in the air like an unspoken promise or the smell of fresh flowers wilting on a nearby table.

I’d leave with you if if I didn’t hold on to every savory note that’s played on that old piano in the attic, craving to remember something I long ago forgot. 

I got really attached to the way you purse your lips and lick your teeth and close your eyes; I don’t know if I could get used to not seeing that anymore.

I can’t even imagine a day where I don’t get to feel you run your heavily-stress-bitten fingernails across my face to feel the warmth of the blood that has stitched itself into a picture of you underneath my cheeks.

I think the poems you embedded in my heart have started to come undone like a ripped tapestry and it hurts like hell. I tried to put them back together but the words were jumbled and all trace of you began to disappear, so I stopped.

I just know that if you leave, the gaping whole in my chest you once patched together with sweet words and festering promises will rip apart; until the only thing I can see is red and the only thing I can hear are the rapid beats of a heart that once belonged to you. 

Just stay. Please.

Don’t dream, because I know you can dream up somewhere better than here and someone better than me.