Don’t Chase Me When I Leave

When I walk out of your life, watch me go. Contemplate calling out my name, yelling out how we can make it work, that you’ll do better, that we’ll be better. Listen as the words almost escape from your throat. Feel them dancing behind your teeth, ready to wrap themselves around my heart and resuscitate a chance that was lost the minute we said hello.

Instead, stay silent. Swallow those pretty little syllables like a shot of whiskey and feel them burn as they fall into your stomach and intoxicate you with the hope you had once lent me.

Have your promises echo throughout your mind, and tempt yourself into believing your own maybes. Let the possibility of tomorrow leap into feet and inspire you to action, ready to follow me. Ready to let me know you’re ready. Ready to let me know it’s finally good timing. Ready to chase me.

But please. Don’t.

Do not chase me when I leave.

Because you know better than anyone that we were only temporary, merely sharing time to rent, nights to kill, and beautiful moments that were destined for yesterday.

But still. Think of me. Remember me, remember us. Reach for your phone to see if I called, to see if I texted you. Find nothing. Debate reaching out. Become drunk with possibility as your mixed signals waltz inside your head, twisting and turning themselves in such a fashion that makes you believe there is a shot after all.

But don’t call me. Don’t text me. Forget me. See someone who looks like me in passing, but do not flinch. Let our memory sift through your fingers like the cigarette smoke you inhale when you want to feel something other than numb. Flick the ashes, throw it all away, and keep moving forward.

As for me? I’ll be running towards a tomorrow that doesn’t have you in it and still find a way to look forward to it anyway. I’ll fall in love with eyes that aren’t yours and stories that I haven’t heard before. I’ll find peace within myself and try and stop searching for homes in other broken people, hoping that our fractured parts could somehow fit perfectly together and heal one another. I know better now. At least I think I do.

But what I know for sure is that this won’t be easy. After all, they say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I believe that’s true. Because the second I saw you, I knew I would miss you.

Do you ever feel the same?