i gave you the formula
on how to hurt me
but i never thought you’d use it.
it’s 4am
and i’m searching your poems
for a clue
but i can’t find one.

they found each other in the mess of growing up,
before college, before decisions,
before everything had to mean something.
she was a ray of sunshine.
he was golden on the horizon.
they weren’t supposed to come back,
but they always did.
they joked and fought and disappeared,
and somehow, always, reappeared.
they loved in glances,
in poems no one else understood,
in saved chats they couldn’t bear to delete.
no one really knew how deep it ran.
not even them.
not until it was too late to say it out loud.
they talked like best friends.
felt like something more.
and kept pretending it wasn’t.
“have patience” she said.
“i will” he replied.
they said “maybe”
when they wanted to say “yes”
they said “later”
when they meant “please, now”
a classic tale of
right person,
wrong time.
but ****, they loved each other anyway.

i can’t stop loving you,
even when i know it’s wrong,
even when i try to move on.
like we’re caught in a loop
we can’t escape,
and maybe we never will.
but here we are,
and i’m still caught in the pull.
you know it, i know it,
we’re still here.