I Am Not A Broken Heart

I am not a broken heart.

I am not collarbones or drunken letters never sent. I am not the way I leave or left or didn’t know how to handle anything,
at any time,
and I am not your fault.

I found a small spark by the end of the tunnel I built around us and I ran as fast as I could with the breath in my throat, scared like hell to lose sight of the only light I’d ever seen
since you
left.

You were the hardest year of my life and I’ve never been so happy. What does that say about me?

I was never afraid of the dark and I spent my youth walking through empty playgrounds at midnight, worried mothers telling girls to be careful and ”the world is an ugly place and not everyone wants you well.” But I was not afraid and I wished for adrenaline to make my veins pulsate in that way that puts them more on the outside of my skin than inside.
After the first night with you I never walked alone at night again because suddenly I had something to lose. Something to save.

I am slowly trying hard to blur out the last months because they’re ugly and I don’t want us to be the evidence of how easy it is for heaven to turn into hell
so I try to recall the beginning.
The early mornings waking up before the dawn. The pink sky and the way you loved the view of the rooftops while the world was still asleep. Or when we were too far apart for even a day and so the text waking me up, every day a floaty thing I never wanted to leave and I was not worried.

I lied, which I often do, because truth is a privilege you never earned and you turned cold and unkind and I just wanted to do you well,
because I’ve never done anyone well before
or cared about anyone being well
in the same way I cared about you.
I just wanted to do you well even though you never did me well.
I lied, I hate who I became when I was with you.

So I am not a broken heart.
I am not the weight I lost or miles I ran and I am not the way I slept on my doorstep under the bare sky in smell of tears and whiskey because my apartment was empty and if I were to be this empty I wanted something solid to sleep on. Like concrete.
I am not this year and I am not your fault.
I am muscles building cells, a little every day, because they broke that day,
but bones are stronger once they heal and I am smiling to the bus driver and replacing my groceries once a week and I am not sitting for hours in the shower anymore.
I am the way a life unfolds and bloom and seasons come and go and I am the way the spring always finds a way to turn even the coldest winter into a field of green and flowers and new life.

I am not your fault.