Stay A Little Bit Longer

Karolyn Rodriguez 3-am thoughts, Lost poetry ,Letters to an Almost Lover

[nervous-runaway]

Because I would come back if you called. I would say sorry if you just said my name. So I blocked and deleted your number. Scrubbed you from my presence and digital life like a surgeon excising clean margins.  I have made sure that there would be no channel for you to crawl back through because I have never been able to tell you no. I will give you no opportunity to ask.  This silent ending kills me, but I know this ache is better than the pain. That misty 'what ifs' are a small price to pay for this peace. For knowing you will never lay your hands on me again

It hurts and soothes in equal measure- K.R 10:04am 10/21/22

[nervous-runaway]

I bent over backwards convincing myself that loving you was easy

An unreliable narrator to the bone-10:21am 10.21.22

[nervous-runaway]

I see your face and I am filled with a need to make you suffer as you have made me suffer, to remind you that I was kind out of duty, not desire.

Excerpt- KR 10/22 11:36pm

[nervous-runaway]

“I don’t know why I still write you letters after all these years. It’s not like they ever did us any good anyways. I used to dream about reading some of them to you, you know? About pouring my heart out & showing you that even though I wasn’t an artist. I did my best. I put my feelings into words and showed you what you meant to me.

That I could finally find just the right set of words to make you realize how important you are to me. But the reality is if I ever tried to share these with you , you’d cut me off & tiredly ask me to leave. Because these words don’t mean anything in the end.” They never did & we you moved on"

Excerpt - KR 11:15

[nervous-runaway]

Does it keep you up at night? The way you begged for my forgiveness-to spit in my face?

Does it haunt you? The way you took 10 years of friendship and buried them beside my heart?

Do 2am phone calls and whispers so quiet they may have been thoughts, drift through your mind?

I hope that when you think you me, you ache -K.R 3:22pm

[nervous-runaway]

I know

I know I am not the only one to have loved someone who was bad for me

To sit here in love and in pain. To watch you walk away in silence because to open my mouth would be to beg you to stay.

I know I am not the only one in the world who has been left behind, embarrassed that even after all this time, I would do anything for you.

I know there have always been and will always be others. I just wish I didn’t feel so fucking alone.

-pennies in the fountain -K.R 11/29

[nervous-runaway]

You, me, we, and the love we had. The likes of which will never be seen again. Of course there will be other loves, other Great loves. But none like ours.

Never again will our particular set of atoms & stardust touch.

Do you think our little nitrogen atoms weep? To know they waited 13.8 billion years, found their way to our hearts in our mothers wombs and waited. Waited to collide in that motel parking lot in South Carolina, only to never meet again. 13.8 billion years for a single moment.

I wonder if my stardust considers me a waste of time like you do -KR 4/18/22

[nervous-runaway]

And as we laid there bare it came to me,

I’ll never be this young again

-I’ll never be this dumb again- KR 2/7

[nervous-runaway]

I can feel the scars you left in the oddest ways, like yesterday. I cried in the kitchen because it was one of those days where nothing went right and I was filled with the fear that he would leave me. Because if I’m not perfect, I’m not worth staying for.

You did that to me-KR 5:57pm

[nervous-runaway]

Even in your absence, I am defined by you

Excerpt- KR 6/2022

[nervous-runaway]

“In another life, another time, I could have been yours and you could have been mine”. I am so tired of hearing that. Exhausted beyond belief from the way we hid behind later.

Because it is always later. Not now, Never now. And so we always seek something to blame us on. That maybe next time it will work. Im so tired.

I’m so tired K.R- 11/29

[nervous-runaway]

I’ve forgotten the way your face looked,When we said goodbye. My palms no longer remember the way your skin felt and my lips have no recollection of yours

I have forgotten so much of you, and yet. I could drive that road from my house to yours blindfolded. When I am lost and so alone, I put on our song and remember how dancing in the kitchen with you felt.I still read the books you recommended and play the games we learned together

The memory of our bodies may be lost to time but I think pieces of you will live on in me and in mine long after I have gone -KR 5/13

[nervous-runaway]

I knew. I knew better

I knew better than to let you in and now here I am again. A caretaker to my bones, Thanking you for your time as you turn way. As if I am not left here again holding pieces of my heart, blood dripping on the tile as you walk out.

I knew better but I let you in anyways and now I have to stitch myself back up again. Find a way to hold these ragged edges together as if I am not merely ache, loss, and a burning desire to love - bound in scar tissue. I knew better but I trusted you anyways. Forever a fool -KR 6/20 10:18pm

[nervous-runaway]

And just like that, I have gone from fearing the edge to free falling. Lost in the drop as I burn for you.

All my thoughts turn to you in my waking hours and it is the false memory of your kisses that wake me damp and disoriented. Your name I whisper as I toss and I turn and I slip fingers between slick thighs in the not quite dawn.

Here I am locking and unlocking, picking up and putting down my phone. Over and over again, hoping to see your name pop up on my screen and prove that you think of me too.

I am lost in the thought of you;it’s too late - KR 5:58pm

[nervous-runaway]

I don’t want to be mean to you. I don’t want to bully you or hurt your feelings

I want to make you laugh so often I become intimately familiar with the way your smile sounds. I want to memorize the way your eyes flash in a moment of joy and find find comfort in the feeling of your palm in mine.

I want to be a moment of peace in your day. That which lifts your heart and reminds you that the birds sing.

But you only text me when you are lonely and rough around the edges. Seeking the spark and intensity of us. Looking for the way I am quick to respond and quicker to strike, because everyone I have ever loved has left and I have been scarred by their departure. So despite all that I desire, I continue this act. This performance of nonchalance and distance, because I live for the moments we speak and I am scared that to drop the facade is to extend you an invitation to depart.

That to show you the tears and the ache as the loss, would only give you the opportunity to strike true instead of know me as I crave. K.R @10:54 6/16/23

[nervous-runaway]

It is not fair. Not fair that I have never felt those palms against my skin, those lips against my neck. The way my breath would catch in that moment of infinite possibility between the heartbeats of a first kiss, and how I would feel like it was you alone who called the blood within my veins as I ached to touch and be touched.

It is not fair that I have never had the privilege , and yet am haunted in all my waking hours. Even in my dreams I cannot escape the phantom of you between my thighs, playing me like the sweetest harp.

It’s not fair-KR 5:10pm 6/12

[nervous-runaway]

You said a lot of things that broke my heart. That I was a waste of your time. That I was a Liar. But there is one thing you said, that hurt the worst because it was true. You told me that I didn’t believe I deserved love. That I stayed in relationships with people who didn’t love me , who hurt me because I believed that I deserved it. That I was not worth it.

And you were right, I did. I thought that I was broken, the kind that you couldn’t fix. So I accepted what love came my way because I believed nobody would ever love me for who I was. Then you told me you loved me. That you wanted to give us a try and I thought that this was it. That I had finally found what I had dreamed of my whole life. Someone who knew every dark and twisted part of my soul, and saw the good in me anyways.

But this was never a Love story, and you were never the prince. So you left.

-You taught me a very important lesson. K.R 2/28/22