After Realizing He’ll Never Love You The Way He Loved Her

You’ll avoid looking at any mirror you pass.
You’ll brush your teeth with your eyes focused on the sink,
you will not check to see if the dress you threw on
over your head
flatters your figure,
if it hugs too tightly,
if it gaps at curves where you wish
his fingers were touching.

Your reflection feels like the villain right now,
like she will mock you for every short-coming
tugging at your spine
whispering in your ear,
“You always bend for the wrong people.”

You don’t want to see how you look.
Plus, there’s an entire world that could eye you,
could decide you are a vision and never let you forget
your smile has lit up cathedrals before.

But those people aren’t him.

An entire sea, you’re still lovesick on one fish
who swims in the opposite direction.
You can’t hook-line-and-sink him
if his heart keeps looking for her
in every crowded room.
Her voice has been the only thing
to conduct electricity
throughout his body
even if you keep hoping
he’ll feel the magnetism,
the magic,
the spark you hold in your hands.

You can’t make him love you
like he loved her,
like he still does.

But you don’t want rationality,
to accept the only future you have together
is when you fall asleep
and you’re finally the girl he holds
without remembering the velvet of her skin.
He howls underneath a moon every night,
hoping she will come back.

You stand in the distance watching,
hoping one day, he will stop calling her name.