Every Time

Every time I tell myself it's the last time. Every time I feel like I can't survive it again. 

Eventually though, my relentless heart yearns. Somehow it keeps believing that something good is out there for me, even though time and time again, being hopeful only gets me hurt. And each time it makes it harder to continue to hope. 

People will say kind things, like they believe that a good heart won't go to waste...but I don't. Because I have given everything they could want, they'll say, and still toss me aside, let me go, push me away. I find myself more afraid to keep hoping that my heart – that I could be chosen, than I am of the pain of being unwanted. 

Because it's not about not being good enough or believing I'm unlovable. If I'm honest, it seems entirely random. Coincidental. I don't believe in fate or destiny, or things being meant to be. I think we all just collide. And I'm increasingly unsure, each time, if I can keep trying to collide with someone in hopes that maybe they will choose me. 

Any of You was Me

I cannot see you here –
a poor figment of a guardian.
No more present than magic. Or luck.
If you are here, you are a liar and this is a masquerade.
Prayers placed futile on our lives as wishes on coins in a fountain.

If you were there, it just confirms you watched me drown. 

Again and again.
And so there is no "later" that you can come, that I would find relief.
I'm vexed to think when and how you'd choose to lift a finger 

– it must be heavy, such burden of power.
Why should I awe at you, if whether you're here or not, everything is the same.
What love is love that looks on its object's suffering with indifference, unmoved.

Now I have more faith in myself, than I'd ever had in you
because I was always there,
and any of you 

was me.