for you.

This poem is for you.

❀

You wore kindness in the corner of your smile almost constantly and I was unfamiliarly in awe of you for it. You had emotion sewed to each of your sleeves, handing out validation with every interaction, posting ‘thank you’s in envelopes and leaving comfort at people’s doors.

❀

You radiated the kind of goodness most people dream of finding in a person. I locked all your flaws away, sunk the safe, melted the key. Because doesn’t compassion outweigh everything else? Does anything else matter when you breathed in the sort of gentleness others had become completely devoid of?

❀

This thank you is for you. Gratitude scrawled on a homemade card. Thank you, for giving me what I thought was unattainable, faux, nonexistent. Friendship.

❀

Thank you, for making me completely and utterly believe it could last forever, even if it couldn’t (not with you).

❀

I’m sorry. I said nothing would stop me from protecting your heart, but I draw the line at standing in front of the gun.

❀

I’m sorry. I watched your incomparable humanity evaporate, bit by bit, each day. I grasped empty air, jumped off high places trying to get it back for you. But the only way was to give up my own heart, and I will never lose myself in order to find someone. I will never break in order to heal someone. Never destroy myself in order to save someone. Not again.

❀

This apology is for you. A note left in the sand, rapidly washing away with the tide. I’m sorry, for resenting the person you became. I’m sorry her face fills me with ice when yours was what warmed me.

❀

This poem, this piece of my heart is for you. Tied in ribbon, carried up and up and up by a helium balloon. Ascending on acceptance’s wings.

❀

I’m sorry, for finally moving on, when I swore I never would. (But you promised you would never become what you have.)

❀

If I could give you anything, it would be happiness. If not that, then your kindness back. But I’ll have to settle for this instead: forgiveness.