The Disease was Never the Cure

I thought you were good for me
and I believed it even
long after you have caused
the worst pain I’ve ever suffered
I blamed it on the world
blamed it on everything
and everyone else but you
I blamed myself, worst of all
while you remained in my mind
the only good thing in my life
and it didn’t occur to me
to correlate the way
you wrote our ill-fated romance
with the way that I became
predisposed to ruin
after we crashed and burned

I had a death wish
I called it different names,
like “none of you
deserves the best of me”
like “I fear nothing, for
I’ve lost him and
I have nothing else
worth losing”
like “don’t leave me broken
halfway, world, why don’t you
break me all the way”
so I flirted with danger,
put my faith to the fire
and slept around with
beautiful nightmares
I reinvented my heart
many times over
but didn’t think to kick
the one thing that makes me
keep falling apart

with you in my life,
even if for the most part
it was only in my imagination
and the part of me that
would not give up on you
and could not recognize
self-destruction
if it grabbed me by the throat,
I was never really alive
I ate only ashes
and breathed only shadows

and I write these lines now,
in soft, sighing remembrance
because for the first time
I’m loving
in a love that flows forward
instead of back
and finally I want to live,
really live,
sweetly dressed
and with direction,
taste every moment
and adore not knowing
what tomorrow holds