Glass Ceiling

I bet you didn't know you built a glass ceiling pane by pane-

pain by pain...

-during our relationship.

Something invisible, made by words never spoken, and feelings that lived on tips of tongues and died silently slipping out on defeated exhales. Fragile feelings becoming hard and tempered like heat treated glass, clearer and harder to break with every fight, every night spent going to bed still angry, stubborn stumbles of half assed appologies, and midnight "sex-capades". Love drunk and sorrow filled hoping all can be forgiven? Forgotten? By an act that may or may not be remembered come daylight.

They say to look at life through windows, not doors. See the future ahead, not close the door to new opportunities.

But nobody talks about the glass ceiling built on love that you never anticipated losing? Falling out of?

You fall away, out of, no longer are a 'partner' in... meanwhile an invisible ceiling is built above you. Some are colorful, reflecting the emotions that it took to create them. Others in odd but beautiful shapes uniquely forged to the memories built between two. And just like that the partner is gone, you are

alone

staring up not forward at a ceiling that was silently, invisibly created. Caping your capacity to love, sealing you into a vault of emotions that seemingly will never be met again. Felt again.

They left you with a glass ceiling on love, an expectation that will never be fulfilled, can't be touched, surpassed, exceeded. I didn't know during the misery of the falling out, all our positives would float to the roof. Like warm air to an attic, holding all our memories in glass panes, like dusty photo albums coffined in disintegrating cardboard boxes to be forgotten. Memories, that will never be played out again with the same magic they once had. Same as the love once full and blooming, never to be had again.

You built a glass ceiling over us, and left me holding every new lover to a standard they will never meet. My feelings have grown and fallen to their highest peak and lowest lows with you, and I'm left reeling in the realization nothing will ever shatter our tempered stained glass ceiling, crushing my expectation of love. Because nothing will ever match you and the love we wove in misery and lost after one too many daybreaks, after drunken escapades failing to fix what the words we never said maybe could have.

I'm left wondering if I built a glass ceiling for you to? Or are your rooms filled with windows and no doors. Expectations wide open, not capped. Can your love find new heights? While mine is boxed away, sealed shut in a room full of locked doors, and the only glass is above, trapping me in memories of us, that never can be touched, replaced, healed and moved past?