love me, love me not

I miss you already, and you're not even gone. Your absence wraps around and through me in a crowded room. The numbness settles back in with every step you take away. For a few months I smiled. I felt safe, noticed, wanted, and happier than anytime in my memory. Now I'm back to feeling only the lonely cracks and bitter shards of another promise broken, another friendship shattered.

But I have to accept it. I knew from the start it would end; it always does. Friendships don't last forever, do they? I've been through it so many times before, I should be a pro at watching people I love walk away. I should be stronger by now, better able to let go with dignity and grace. But the tears still run at the thought of losing another significant companion. I know you don't love me, not in any lasting way. I'm nothing more than a transient cohort, a passing playmate. We bonded, but you held back. I mean very little to you; you mean the world to me.

Change is inevitable, I know. I just hoped we would be changing together, instead of the change providing an easy exit. I know that exit doors double as entrances, with every significant person who walks away, at least one more walks in...but it can't quite fill the hole you'll leave behind.

I dedicate Elizabeth Bishop's Villanelle to you.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of losing door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joke voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

I know that losing you won't be a disaster, not like I feel it will be. Maybe I won't lose you at all; I may be simply paranoid over nothing...maybe you're not leaving at all.

When you're gone, will you miss me? Will you even notice my absence from your life? I wish you loved me at all, because then maybe you wouldn't leave...or at least maybe you'd miss me too. But I can't make you love me, not at all. I have no idea what I've been to you; I'm amazed you've stayed as long as you have; I don't understand the time you've spent with me...especially just me. I'm nothing; a substitute, a transition. I could be everything, or at least something, but that would require x-ray vision because my outside is ugly, doesn't match my inside. I wish you were blind, then maybe you'd see what you're losing in walking away from me. Maybe not.

Maybe it's no loss at all.

People walk away so easily; I've never created a void in someone else's heart.

Will anyone ever love me enough to stick around?