Your Presence Is Relentless

If you stay, I will fade slowly.
If you go, it will take but an instant
before I disappear completely,
lost to anyone and anything that ever
had the misfortune of knowing
a broken individual.

Shame on me for letting you define
all that I was,
all that I am.

My brain is ever so talented at channeling mixed signals—
to stay,
not to stay,
to have one foot out the door
and another in a roomful of chaos.

Every intertwining moment with you
slowly pushes me toward the terrifying realization.
It hits me like a freight train and slowly sinks in—

I do not know how to forget you.
It cannot be learned, nor willed.
You are with me, for better or worse.

I shudder to speak of you, but sadly,
that does not mean I dream of you any less.