Even The Beautiful Can Break

By

The weather is changing and now the wind is starting to feel as cold as you did the day I ruined it all.

Goodbye to summer breezes and days beginning and ending with sun.

Fall in Chicago is a beautiful time, but even beautiful things have a certain darkness to them.

You taught me this.

All of that time you thought I was the darkness your heart needed, but I think my light is what scared you off.

You told me once that honest people like me were few and far between.

I was always your go-to when no one else understood you.

I was old reliable; the one you knew would always be there.

I don’t know why I hoped you could be the same for me.

You were just a passerby whom I mistook for a long-term resident.

You never wanted this.

We never expected this.

And now all I am left with is

This.

I am so damn sad all of the time, and I know by now I should have moved on.

You left in the spring and not even the heat of the summer could burn your memory out of me.

Yesterday I wore an outfit I intentionally bought to wear out with you; I think you would have loved it.

But maybe you wouldn’t have because I always assumed you would have loved me, too. And we both see where those assumptions got us now.

I don’t know why I thought I would have my perfect ending when all along I knew that what we had was so much more than perfect.

We took our chaos and created a calm only we could understand.

I always knew you could not be permanent, but I never realized how much I would miss the chaos when all I was left with was the silence.

I think always having to live with the fact that one of the last things you did before you left this place was make sure you never had to see me again will hurt more than all of the beautiful girls you have had that I will never be.

We both know that I don’t have a home where you are; you have made an electric city feel like a void.

Sometimes it feels like my heart is just a void.

As much as I try to tell myself that none of it was real, that none of it mattered and that you probably never cared, I cannot help but shake the fact that the world aligned so perfectly to bring us together.

Three years in the same city and all it took was one train ride to change our lives.

But maybe it only changed me.

I still think about you every day, and I hate myself for it.

Every time I walk past our coffee shop, every time I notice it’s “our” stop when I am on the brown line, and every time I look in the mirror and see the eyes that once beheld some of the most beautiful moments of my life.

It’s you.

And it feels like it will always be you.

And it drives me crazy that I cannot shake this feeling that is you.

Sometimes I try to convince myself that it means that we are meant to be.

That maybe you really are my soulmate.

But then I wake myself up from my “sadgirl” daydream and remind myself of who left who.

I am sure you have moved on from me by now.

You are beautiful. Inside and out. I just hope you see that, too.

I hope she listens to you, really and truly listens because you have a beautiful mind that you are often too scared to share.

I hope she will watch cartoons with you, even if she isn’t really into it.

I hope she’s there to comfort you when work and life are becoming too much.

I hope one day this is all what you want

And that if it isn’t, you have the courage to change it.

Even if I can never have you again, I will always hope your life is going exactly as you always dreamt it to be.

I worry about you a lot, and I just hope that she sees through the facade.

Even the beautiful can break.

You taught me that.

I only wish I knew if I taught you that, too.