Half of Me

My best friend died last fall,

And the person running around in his body

Doesn’t love me.

And I don’t know why.

Treatment was necessary,

A hard step, long overdue,

Ten years I waited.

And I'm so proud.

But it left him a different person.

He doesn’t recognize me.

He doesn’t remember

What we said,

What we were.

I reminded him of the night he awoke me in tears,

Clinging to me like a lifeline,

In so much anguish thinking someone would come destroy us.

He said, every time I find something good, it gets ruined.

I swore I’d never let anyone come between us.

I didn’t know it would be him.

You know, he said one night on the way home from the club,

We are the same person.

We are two parts of a whole.

We complete each other.

Twin flames, I thought.

But now...

Now he says he doesn’t want to remember

The things he said when he was crazy.

He was crazy?

That’s why he loved me?

It makes sense.

You’d have to be crazy to choose me.

I wake each morning remembering he’s gone,

And I grieve all over again.

It’s like the phantom pain of a missing limb.

Two parts of a whole, and the other half was severed from me.

I swore I wouldn’t let anyone come between us,

Not even him.

Nothing can fill the parts of me I lost.

I will hold that space for him.

But now I have to navigate a future I wasn’t expecting.

Because...

My best friend died last fall,

And the person running around in his body

Doesn’t love me.

And I don’t know why.