I Left You Behind On the Painted Shore
A Poem
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the horizon bleeds red,
like a wound in the sky —
and I’m waiting on you
to show your true colors
before I get too bruised
but the waiting hurts
because I’ve been at this game
for what feels like a small eternity,
watching the hourglass fill
with sands of this lost love
the shore whispers secrets
as I walk along its line,
the path clear and narrow,
so much more straightforward
than the road you led me on
but my footprints disappear
as quickly as they are made —
as if I’m a ghost on land
with no impressions left to make,
just scars to leave behind
the memories rush like the waves,
each one more stabbing than the last,
and I wonder what I ever saw
in the little globe you tried to forge
for us, just us, a world we couldn’t leave
but the gush of my heartbeat quickens
when I think I’ve seen your face
in every crowded street I walk —
who’s really the ghost here,
and who’s doing the haunting?
the seashells I find are cracked,
much like the fragments of my heart,
but I collect them anyway,
all the little heartbreaks I sought —
why didn’t I let go sooner?
but there’s no point in second guesses,
no chance to reverse the past —
and I can try and try and try,
but you won’t go quietly, will you,
shattering everything in your path?
that’s why I take to the beach,
the sanctuary of a lifetime,
and trace the road back home —
away from you and all the pain,
the broken glass we were together
