I Lost You Piece By Piece

I had to let you go.

But it did not happen in one morning, out of the blue.

It certainly did not happen altogether in just one day.

It took me thousands of days and millions of goodbyes.

Each time, a constant, tiring battle raged on,

between my sensitive heart and my rational mind,

between a delusional fantasy and a harsh reality.

Every night, I would release all my grief for you

and watch them fly away like millions of fireflies.

There were times when I would sit inside an empty train in undisturbed solitude

and ponder about our past conversations and your present endeavors.

You still continue to come across my mind

like a flicker of empty bulb light.

The only difference between then and now,

is that I do not cry, I do not cry.

Painfully, but gradually, I have begun to let go of each of my feelings for you.

Each of your memories clung onto me

like pieces of skin hooked into my body.

I slowly learned to unlatch them and discarded them layer after layer

and watched the wind carry them away to different places.

You see, I didn’t lose you in just one day.

I lost you piece by piece,

until the image of you, once so real in flesh and bones,

became nothing more than just a shadow.

Although a few scraps of your memories were very much alive in my mind,

my feelings for you have faded away slowly, day by day.

I let you go and you slowly became a vague memory.

Until I could no longer grieve.

Until the familiar feeling of holding onto you was no longer there.

Until the familiar face of you disappeared in the back of my mind,

only to emerge sometimes as a simple reminiscence.

Until I could think of you as nothing

but a small fraction of the seashell

floating among the vast part of the ocean of life.