#abagailpacheco

[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

The ghosts of the life we lived together still linger in the empty space where you used to be. I wonder if you ever did become a better person, if you continued to take that 2 hour train ride for who you loved, for who you left me for, if you’re happy. I am happy, I am whole, I am free. Years later, even when the ghosts come knocking at my door, I’m no longer afraid of them. We shared time and space together, they will always be a part of me. You will always be a part of me and still that does not mean that I give you more power over me than you deserve. I loved you once, and maybe in some other universe, I still do. I hope you are a better person. I hope by now you’ve created the life you dreamed of, still I’m not sure you deserve it and so I hope you’ve changed. I hope you’ve become the person who deserves the good things. 

[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

you and i are proof that there is nothing rational about love. if there did exist rationality, we would have never made it. because your friends tried to sell you on the idea that I was not good for anyone. they ran you through a timeline of events, dug up every love that went bad at the core and placed it before you. they tried to sell you on the idea that i could have never be good to you. and yet, you stepped into the abyss of everything unknown. Told your fear to come back another day because courage was visiting. This is love. 

[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

We don’t speak in two years and when we finally do, your concern for my well being echoes off the walls. So you see my heartache as a living breathing thing. You make a point of looking at my hands for evidence of everything I have stubbornly refused to let go of. That you don’t love me anymore. That whatever we had is over. That the world we shared, has evolved since then. That instead I have been waking up in one where we don't end up together. the only thing i tell you is this, ‘you’ve got to stop reading my poems’

stop reading my poems

[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

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[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

but it was not a mistake. that collision between us. how you came into my life and i made more room for you than necessary. more room than you could ever really take up. my mother sells me on the idea that this is how it was supposed to happen. that there comes a time where things begin to make sense. come together in an effort to manifest something more beautiful than you could ever imagine. five weeks after you’re gone, I instill belief in the idea that after all, this is how it was supposed to happen. we were supposed to intertwine our lives in the only way we knew how. all those phone calls. the text message thread in which I first mentioned a future in which we’d end up together. the fallout. how you had a new girl in your bed the same night you broke my heart. how i cried all the way home that night and began to move my feet towards the door. and how eventually in time, i grew strong enough to leave you.

last night at the diner table, I came to the realization that this is how it was supposed to happen. you served your purpose. you opened up my heart, gave me enough to grow hopeful again. and then, you were on your way. and it has begun to make sense. so this is to say thank you. thank you for arriving when you did and leaving when you were supposed to. for not dragging out your stay. for not ruining all the good you brought out of me. for leaving me while my love was still good.

[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

There was so much in me that wanted to bury myself beneath the heavy burden of losing you. The other part of me refuses to keep letting you have the best of me. You have had the best of me. You kissed me at a time where I had begun to let my heart grow new, stronger roots. You held me at a time where I wasn't afraid anymore. You witnessed me for the woman I was- brave, or naive, whichever aligns best with the version of me that was always casting herself off ledges to keep you. I stepped out of who I was in order to become someone you could fall in love with. Someday. In the near future. And we never quite made it there. And I finally understand why roadblocks exist. We were never meant to fall in love with each other. You were just meant to remind me that there is still so much room left in my heart for beautiful things to happen. You were the one to whom I opened up my heart to, a reminder that I still could. And I was the girl who helped you believe in the idea that there was still someone out there left in the world who loved you in spite of everything ugly you could become. I was the girl who put her world at your feet, the girl who reminded you of all the different ways you could love a person. Because at the end of the day- some part of me loved you. Some part of me still does. But I also know that we aren't the right people for each other. I learned that the hard way but still a lesson well learned. Because you're happy in your existence alongside hers and because I haven't let bad love turn me inside out. Because there is still so much of me that keeps trying, and living, and loving.

[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

I still miss you but it’s not the same anymore. I won’t call and I refuse to let my hands reach out for you because I have learned the hard way that you are not a place I can rest upon. You were never a safe place for me to reside in and there was nothing sacred about the way you disarmed me if it was only for your convenience. I became soft for you. I lost my fear of stepping out into the open and I did it for you. I never should have. I should have retrieved my heart on the day where all the casualties began to pile up on my side of the battlefield. And even then, in the death of everything good that I used to be, I still found ways to love you. Maybe they weren’t always good. But I did my best. Even from here, years after the soil has forgotten all the blood I spilled there, I am still loving you in the only way I know how- with my hands at my side, a phone call log that doesn’t remember your phone number and a heart that still loves you but has grown too tired to try to make a home amidst your war zone.

[thewordsyouneverunderstood]

i.

why the fuck can’t I stop dreaming about you? a stranger i fell in love with. someone i never knew anything about. someone i still found ways to love in all the uncharted. all the unknown.

ii.

there is no easy way to say it. i guess i knew this would happen. that we would get to a day where the distance between us was something we were both tired of trying to overcome. i just never envisioned it being this way. ending like this.

iii.

a lot of the time i’m not sure what to tell them about you. you know, when they ask. something less than a boyfriend. but a lover that pressed hands against skin. something holy. not always a good place to be in.

iv.

even though you really hurt me, when i hear the news, i learn how to be happy about it. so you finally learned how to love something. and I finally learned how to love you from here, far away, from a place that only ever knows how to wish you well.

v.

i don’t know that there’s much to say about you. or about us. we shared small moments. yet important ones. and i loved you. and although you did not, i have the certainty that if i died today, you’d show up to the funeral. that has to count for something.