Soul Contract Expired

It’s been a month since that last embrace

that last kiss

that last "I’ll love you forever"

undone in the same breath you spat "psychopath"

You rushed toward me

my heart hammering at 180 BPM

afraid

dishes breaking at my feet

nothing half measured

love and hate, each at full throttle

I must have woken a beast you kept sleeping

something in me rubbed raw against your shadow

You loved and hated me

and somehow,

in that upside-down world we built,

it made sense

A month later

you ask if I’ve moved on

you show up at my door unannounced

trying to steal the peace

I gave to you

vulnerably, unconsciously,

lovingly,

self-sacrificing

Perhaps the universe did lend you to me

but only on a six-month lease

I’m waiting for that blessed day

when the stomach pangs will stop

the chills

the headaches

the spiraling "what ifs" and "whys"

especially the "whys"

We’re not teenagers...

we’re two adults

with full lives,

enough experience to know better

and still we lived this rapture

we thought was divine love.

We thought we’d found eternity,

when it was just obsession and harm

disguised as devotion

You held up a mirror

to all the places

I still don’t love myself

and yes, I’m grateful,

but I won’t minimize

the hell I’ve descended into

during and after us

I wonder about that poem you said you wrote,

but I know it’s just an excuse

to hunt me again,

to pull me back

into the karmic cycle

I can live without reading it

I’ll let it turn into a ghost

with no one left to haunt

its calling falling on deaf ears

I’m yearning for that blessed day

when I’ll forget

that you ever existed.

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Thank you for reading this very personal poem. Previous works (about this same relationship) that made Top Story: