you used to look back at me, now you don't look back at all

When you loved me, I was able to ignore all the other shit in my life because I knew that, eventually, I would get to see you again. but it wasn’t a mutual feeling. To me, you were an escape. To you, I was a cage. and every weekend I would trap you and disrupt you and take you away from your weight-lifting, book-reading, and biking. Every weekend you patiently waited for the week to return, so you could be alone again.
When you left me, it just shattered the rest of my life a little more solidly. It took the loss of my mom and gave it a mirror. I got lost in all the reflections of grief. I couldn’t focus on what I was seeing. but I couldn’t stop looking. you kept coming in and out of my life whenever I reached out for you, but you only stayed long enough for me to ask you to come back. Then you left again.
It’s been six months since the last time we talked. That’s longer than we were even together. It’s been ten months since you told me you wouldn’t be coming to my mom’s memorial service with me, because you felt like we should break up. you told me that you didn’t feel giddy or excited about me. I was devastated. you wrote me an email. I called you.
I don’t want to settle for someone else. I don’t know how to stop wanting you. Your communication sucked and the way you handled emotion sucked and the way you stopped loving me the way I needed you to sucked. It sucked. The whole damn situation sucked. but you are forever tied up in my mother’s death and that makes it so much harder to let go of you. you were the last person that I loved that she met and I still want you back. I wrote you a letter to say that, but you never replied. So I haven’t tried again.
because silence is an answer, and if you wanted anything to do with me, I would have heard from you.
but I liked the way you did things, and that’s what I miss about you. I miss the way you would laugh when I’d get excited about something. I miss your steady gaze and closed-mouth smile. I miss your lips. I miss kissing you, you were so good at it, you were the best. I miss your light touch and how you’d stroke the spider web on my arm. I miss your freckles and the way they draped across your chest like a cascading necklace, or like constellations. like galaxies. I miss your intelligence and love of math and science. I miss our bike rides, and watching your hips as you pedaled; watching you move your foot in the toe-cage. I miss you so much, and it gnaws my chest like hunger. it eats at me and there is nothing I can do about it but move on. and I’m trying. I’m trying. but sometimes I get stuck.
every time I meet someone new, I have to go through this. I have to slowly deconstruct the memories of the previous people I have loved. I have to justify why I am where I am. I have to trace a path from there to here, so I can feel like I am making a good decision. I have to let you go. I know this. I have known this. and I have made progress. but every so often I have to bleed you out again. I have to attach the leech and let it suck out the stagnant blood that is you before it poisons the rest of me. and someone else always ends up hurt in this process.
try to keep it quiet. there is no one else like you. try to keep it down. these memories serve no purpose. try to let it go. you are gone.
you are gone, and I don’t need you, and no matter how much I miss you, it doesn’t change a thing.