15

When I was 15 I loved a boy with chocolate locks

And bleeding wrists

With eyes like magic 8 balls

I was always looking into them for the answers

Answers I didn’t get until I was 16 and crying

Because he only ever loved me when he

Needed his own love much more than I did.

I didn’t realize this until I was 17 and sitting alone and still

Because she had ripped my lips off and left me to drown in the blood

And the streetlights reminded me of the boy and the way he smelled

When we would be driving through the night

Trying to escape the reality that I only loved him

When he needed more than just my love to save him.

Sometimes, I think, people leave in order for you to really see

Why you wanted them to stay. 

Reviews

[Clockwork]

Having someone leave like that always shakes us to the core, just as badly as any earthquake makes the earth tremble. Their absence makes shockwaves that split open city blocks and rearrange neighborhoods. Sometimes we are never get the homes we knew, our hearts as we built them, back in the same piece after they leave.

When those moments of turmoil are over, and we reach the stage you write about in the last two lines, then we really see and feel what those people meant in our lives. Well done here.