I do not need you

I do not need you

to feel the surge of morning lifting me out of the consolation of dreaming.

Whereas I once rushed to sleep so I could wake to seeing your name on my phone,

I now dread it, the memory of how it once felt

cheapened by the knowledge that you hold fast like an avalanche.

It is now messages from anyone else that make the hours that march on a little more bearable.

My sides used to be hostage to your banter,

and now the reaction is hollow - a relic of muscle memory.

I do not feel the rays of sun arch from your shoulders and hair,

but rather the weight of shadows falling from your range of vision,

of the versions of the self-dependent island I must occupy to make it work

as you assess me as if to take another gamble at

if I'll forgive you one more time for the next day's transgressions.

I never did.

I simply carried each with me until they all became so heavy

it was all I could do not to sink.

I finally do not need you,

and it is in surviving many deaths over -

when I am alone because you were weak -

that I feel relief

in accepting you'll never be the man you promised you'd live up to be.

Not for me anyways,

I am wearier now, less eager to please and be pleased,

and your slate has run out of spaces

to keep record of your appeals.

One does not return to a home they have set alight,

that is not the way of things.

So call up your insurance plan,

for I will be damned if I was it.

You can say without resentment now

that with audacious hindsight you choose me,

while I endure the weight of it.

But in your absence, both chosen and not

I have learned

I do not need you

and in losing the force for laughing, and sharing, and having faith

I have also lost a space for you.