the crushing weight of witnessing you forget me in real-time.
3 years.
known each other for 3 years.
almost 4.
together for most of it.
today, is december 26th.
the year doesn’t matter.
never did anyways.
you called me at 12:43 am
on december 26th.
you told me about a movie
you saw with your friends.
i said yea,
mhm,
oh wow,
nice.
checking off the boxes for
displaying active listening.
but i didn’t really care,
because it was
december 26th.
12 / 26.
december twenty-sixth.
the twelfth month.
the twenty-sixth day.
forever burned in my memory,
but apparently not yours.
you end our call on a long, eerie note.
you hang your voice away, distancing yourself from me.
you always did now-a-day,
but today was december 26th.
in our 3,
almost 4,
years of knowing each other,
how else could you think of december 26th?
you say merry christmas,
even though it’s not christmas anymore.
i say yea,
it’s definitely not christmas anymore.
what is christmas without its 25th?
what is a holiday without its celebration?
what does it mean to celebrate without love?
what is love if the world it inhabits rejects?
the silence fills the empty space like a deadly poison
meant to crush our insides and fall upon itself.
we sat together in that silence.
we sat in it on december 26th.
you say your final goodbyes,
i exchange mine as a courtesy
that i’m all too used to,
whenever it comes to you.
however,
it’s a formality completely foreign
on a day such as
december 26th.
i don’t expect you to bow to my feet,
present me with royalties and riches,
or even throw me any extravagant attention.
but it’s december 26th.
i’d expect the same formalities
i give to you
to be given back
to me.
especially since i know,
for an unfortunate fact,
i’d grant you those same, simple
formalities upon you when the day
because,
i’ve known you for 3,
almost 4,
years.
and in that time,
i’ve loved you
tremendously
in all my waking seconds.
so much so
it’ll drain into my unconscious dreams,
even after all this time
has past.
that’s why i know i would.
seeing as though you lived in
and through all those 3,
almost 4, years.
and all this time i thought,
i really thought
you would still remember
december 26th,
like i remember
january 21st.
