It’s funny how all I want is to be in one place,
And yet I know I will never stay for long.
Time will pass, and soon enough
You won’t even remember my face,
Won’t recall our last embrace.
The steps of a path I wish to retrace,
But I know I won’t.
Because I know when all is said and done,
I won’t be the same anymore,
And neither will you.
Our paths once crossed,
Now diverged,
And I’m not quite sure what’s in store.
I can think maybe we’ll meet again down the road,
See each other once more,
But it won’t be the same,
And I can’t expect it to be.
Now that I’ve already left, I’ve closed that door.
I’ll become part of a memory
Of you and me in a different time,
The memory of that one summer,
Where, for a split second, our stories did align.
But less a memory and more a shadow,
That memory still ours, yours and mine.
Memory is fickle,
A silhouette
Against the fading light
Chasing its trail
Through the haze
Until it is lost out of sight.
Yet I turn around to see
Suddenly I am that figure
Fleeting in the dark,
Memory not the culprit,
It’s my own fault.
I know I will always be the one leaving,
Even when I am the one
Who wants this to work.
Leaving is all I’ve ever known,
My default, my curse.
And once I’m gone, I can’t return,
It isn’t just something you can reverse.
I can rehearse
In my head, just how things will go.
Like if I predict it already, somehow things will be easier,
Somehow I’ll know.
I tell myself, don’t get too attached,
Because good things like this,
They aren’t meant to last.
If they did, that would mean that I could stay,
That I could have a stable life someday.
And I think I missed that class,
I think things got lost in translation
Somewhere along the way.
And that is why I push them away
Before they have a chance to come close,
Before they give me a reason to stay.
Just so I can still pretend
I never even cared anyway.
But I did get attached this time,
Though I wasn’t aware.
I really tried not to,
It was an accident, I swear.