A Fool

If the roses at the flower shop down the street from your house could speak, they’d tell a story of how they never found their way to me. They’d sigh in pain over my hands that didn’t get to caress their smell.

I’ve beaten myself up many nights over what I could have, should have, must have done right. Definitely done wrong.

But, this is no longer my fault and you are no longer mine to hold.

Lonely nights and busy days.

Night fall and darkness all around me as I waited for my phone to light up and my room to sense the spark of your midnight love, but it never came. I love you’s spewed from your mouth like water, with no actions to match. You were a boy, working hard to be the man you could be and I lent my hand, head, heart and soul to be your comfort through the storm. I walked through fire and became armour to your dreams.

Oh, what a fool I have been.

Long nights, frivolous fights, you were always ‘tired’ of me and my constant whirlwind of hurt.

‘Don’t be a child’, you said.

Now, questions swirl and the ‘drafts’ folder is piling up with words you will never read and heart songs you will never hear.

I still remember your smell, of cheap cigarettes and Old Monk, laced with the sweetness of your just-out-of-the-shower scent. Your smile that lit up my world and your laugh that brought out the innocence in mine.

Missing you has become second skin, being angry at you is still taking some getting used to.

You promised to love away my demons… Oh, what a fool I was for not seeing that you just wanted me to love away yours instead.

A sweet talker with eyes that make me fall softly in love over and over again. Hands that laid the foundation for every forever we could have had.

But those lips.

Lips to kiss away my every fear, lips that spewed lies to give birth to new ones. You’ve made a fool out of me too many times, you’ve sorryed away too many unnecessary jibes.

Practiced signatures on old tissue papers, dates noted and forevers put on a calendar made of dreams. 

Movie tickets in an old memory jar and your shirt tucked away in my closet, tucked away in a small corner of my heart.

Goodbyes are never easy and we had too many for me to count. But this last one, this painfully real and horribly prolonged one is going to cut deeper than anything that can be stitched up.

You promised… What a fool I have been. Oh, such a fool for you.