The Way I Still Write About You

I write about you so badly. I could write literary trash, and if it is about you, I still consider it gold. If I wrote a poem that said,

“My love
for you
was a universe
in and of itself”

And that was it, nothing else.

I would love it more than I loved everyone after you.

I’ve written about others, but nothing aches like the you in my bones.

Nothing bleeds like the inky words you said that seep from my ears after I’ve been hit over the head with your apathy. I feel more sane after I’ve been bottled by the red wine poems than I do when the glass is unshattered, the words unwritten.

I still write about you after all this time.

It’s inappropriate the way I write about you. Shameful.

It’s not fair to the rest of the suffering world.

I write about you the way a mother writes about her child that went missing. Devastatingly.

The way someone would write about plane crash victims when the wreckage was never found.

Presumed dead, they say.

Our relationship, presumed dead.

But presumed is never definite, and that is the where I slide into the loophole.

Presumed is a guess. It’s not intelligent enough to outsmart my spirited gut feeling.

Presumed can’t hide from this heart.

Presumed is to expect something, and you told me to never expect anything from you.

Presumed is just supposed. Presumed is to bet on the basis of probability.

And don’t you know me? I never bet on the favourite.

Give me 31-1 odds. Give me dark horse over shoe-in any day.

I write about you like you are the come from behind.

Presumed dead,

they say.

Presumed,

I say.

So I write about you like this.

I write about you like it’s four years later and I’m still searching for the body.

But I’m not, am I? I just write about you like I might find you alive at the end of every line.