There isn’t much time left for you and me. No time to say all that has been unsaid for all these many years. No time to recount the love that was once felt but no has been replaced by an unwelcome comfort. No time to reminisce about the velvet sunsets and rainy mornings. No time to be just us, two people who would have given up the world for each other had they been given the choice. There isn’t much time for us now. Just a split second, enough to take a mental picture of you one last time before you leave, and then you’ll be gone. Just enough time to remember what you looked like before you lost the humanity in your eyes. Just enough time to remember the person that you were before you stopped smiling. Just enough time to remember the damage that you did.

And then you’re gone, lost in the wind like ashes scattered in a storm. Yet, I stand there, gazing hopelessly at the wind, willing you to return. The morsel of my soul that you left so cruelly now aches for you to return. And I stand in the same spot, through velvet sunsets and rainy mornings, because there is no solace in grieving for a heart that isn’t broken, but incomplete, for a soul that isn’t human but something of a shadow of a person that it was.

Even now, when I don’t remember what you looked like, or what you smelled like, or where your cheeks deepened when you smile, I am still you. And even when I wish you to be dead, you live on as me. And the last sliver of self-respect dies inside me, for I am no longer me but a shadow of the pain that you caused to make me another you.