History is full of people like me. Waiting. Wanting. Failing. Writing poems in somebody’s name. I think. I keep oscillating between the moments of absolute clarity and the times of uncertainty when I don’t even want to face myself. I go wavering between good days where I sleep soundly and bad days where I indulge in everything caffeine just to get through each minute. This back-and-forth movement never stops. I know it should, but it won’t because there’s so much of yesterday stuck in my throat waiting to flow into a river of poetry.

Everything about my poetry is unhealthy—the despair, the pessimism, the frantic loyalty. I can’t help but write about everything that has left me against my will and everything that I have let go of willingly. I try to align the bygones into some sort of symmetry, but they refuse. I wish I had the endurance of loving you in a way that isn’t grueling or humiliating. The thought of you leaving and the moment you actually left drilled a void so deep within me that no amount of sedation could help lessen the pain, let alone ease it.

All because I am in love with you.

I am tired of vandalizing myself just to receive a fragment of affection from you. I am fully aware that there will come a time when no measure of selflessness will help me. You won’t find my clumsy dancing or my bad singing or even my shirt stuck halfway on my chin amusing anymore. I can write about everything else so that I don’t have to write about you, think about the existence of black holes so that I don’t have to think about you. But then I end up doing what I do best and find my heart sobbing its way into perpetual doom.

I am upset with myself more than I am with the world. I am upset with my mind, my heart, and my hands for carrying the weight of this love. I don’t know how to put it down in words. Do you know the ironic thing about these words? They do absolutely nothing for the one writing them. Yet, I tirelessly write my poems like prayers in a hope that the afterlife is merciful, and that some holy resurrection will pull me through.

I know, there’s no instruction manual for getting over a love that runs so deep within my veins. So, I just let the verses flow, like an intravenous tragedy because there has been a lot of losing lately. I do realize that writing prayers isn’t the answer anymore because there is a high probability of everything happening all over again. I can’t afford to be stuck between commas forever. So here it is—a much needed full stop. A well-deserved ending for a faithless being, for she finally found something she could believe in.

And ever since, I have been untwining leftover love from my incoherent ramblings.