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HERE’S MY NEW BOOK THAT THIS POEM IS FROM →

YOU ONCE WERE MY SOULMATE, NOW YOU ARE A SHADOW

when I was with you, I thought you were everything / I loved you deeply & only ever wanted you to love me back with equal strength / I wrote romantic poems about how you & I would be looking at each other, driving around town with the jazz playing / I used to think that was what I wanted / we could both be mature & stereotypically in love with each other / I thought it would last forever / we would grow up together

we would grow cynical together / I have been glad many times, but especially now, that things never worked out / you would never have loved the way I came to dress, the way I colored my hair neon bright, the way I was so determined above anything else to accomplish something you didn’t think was worth doing / you would never have loved the person I have become / you only loved me when I became a carbon copy of you

when I told you my secret dream, you said, “well, that’s nice but -” / you were the one who had taken the advice of your drunkard neighbor who told you it was too stressful to try & follow your own dream / I find it hard to believe he was literally the only person you ever knew you could have asked that question to, & you believed him when he told you it wouldn’t be fun / you decided rather than find out for yourself you’d rather blindly believe he was right, even though he was just one person & that was just his opinion / you never asked again

complacency & comfort can be terrible things / you get comfortable & then you stop evolving / you simultaneously love & hate where you’re at / you think it’s okay to just be “okay” / mediocrity came knocking on your door one day & you let it in / it has lived there, hogging your couch & soiling your floor ever since / it would leave if you asked it, but you never have

I can take comfort in knowing that what I did was way beyond anything you would have wanted to do or would have let me do / you would have told me it was a terrible idea & I would have believed you / if we would have ended up together, we would never have ventured out / every place we went would be “safe”, would be “socially acceptable” / you would never become the kind of person who would stay up until three in the morning falling in love with the concert you just heard, you would never venture out on a whimsical road trip alone to do things that were genuinely important to you, you would never pursue the challenging obstacle course, you would never fly out to see the musicians play / you would stay safe with your cruises & prepackaged vacation deals where the itinerary would dictate your every move, your work would always be your first love for the wrong reasons, & you would never be bold enough to let yourself live

instead you would follow in the footsteps of every sheep who walked before you, blindly following everything the herd did because they were “supposed to” / if we would have ended up together, I would never know what it was like / it wouldn’t have been the type of thing you would ever want to do, & I would have agreed with your vision of me because I really thought you were right

& you would never have been able to do it alone / it didn’t, couldn’t, never would fit in with your narrow ideas about how to keep up with both the Joneses & the sheep at the same time

& I can take comfort in knowing that what I did was way beyond anything you could have done / I thought you were the better half but now I see I’m wrong / I did something braver than anything you can fathom, much less bring to life

you could have had it all too, if you would have really wanted to

but you never had the courage