True happiness, a positive attitude,
Everyone has inside, they could spread,
With others, throughout each day,
So many hide, those feelings, or show,
A fast flash, then back to a negative,
Story, for some it’s like self-torture,
Not letting, the subject fade.
Someone trying to create something positive,
In this material world, today, spending, time,
Working around their own mistakes, they might hear,
That’s ok, unless they receive, a lot in pay.
So many have a bad attitude, is it a subconscious,
Trained reaction, taught to the public some way,
It would be a challenge, for most to just talk about,
Positive things in their life, repeating them, for just one day,
And walking away from those who complain, or talk negative,
With the words they say.

                       The original: Tom Maxwell  © 06/11/2025 AD

I no longer relive them
Now
I live with them

Part 3 - H

07 April 2025

"The Last Goodbye (Love Like Wounds)"
You were the kind of love
they write tragedies about.
A wild, aching secret
I kept buried beneath my ribs,
like a song I wasn’t allowed to sing—
but did, anyway.
I loved you
with every shattered part of me.
With hands that never stopped trembling.
With a heart that kept returning to your fire,
even when it knew
I’d be left in ashes.

You were the silence
after the scream.

The hush of pain
disguised as comfort.
The wound that cut deep
so deep—
but never stayed.

You hurt me
in ways I still don’t have names for.
Left traces of yourself in my skin
like bruises shaped like promises.
And still,
I loved you.
Like I didn’t know better.
Like I didn’t know how not to.
You touched me
and the world disappeared.

Not in light—
but in shadow.

And I swore it was beautiful
because I couldn’t bear to call it what it was:

lonely.

Hollow.

Dangerous.

I miss you
like an addict misses the ache.
Like a ghost misses the body it once haunted.
I miss you in that quiet, trembling way
people miss what destroyed them.
And oh—
how I remember
your crimson red kiss.

Forbidden.

Fierce.

A sacred wound I kept reopening.
It tasted like surrender,
like sorrow,
like the end of the world
wrapped in silk.
I wore your love like a secret—
and bled for it in silence.
I still wake up
with your name caught between my teeth.
Still feel the phantom of you
in every breath I take.
Still ache for the way
you made even pain feel like intimacy.
But love
should not be something
I survive.

It should not ask me
to trade myself in pieces
just to be held.

You were my forbidden.
My undoing.

The ache that sang lullabies
in a language only I could understand.
But I can’t do it anymore.
I can’t keep kissing knives
and calling it devotion.
I can’t keep breaking just to feel something.
This—
this is my goodbye.
Not soft.
Not easy.
But final.
Because I may still grieve you—
may still wake up
missing the way you held my chaos—
but I will not go back.

I deserve mornings
that don’t start with aching.

Hands that touch me without burning.
Love that doesn’t leave me
emptier than before.

I still carry your name in my bones,
but it no longer commands me.
I still dream of you—
but I no longer beg the dream to stay.
I loved you
with everything I had.
And now I let you go
with everything I’ve become.
You were never forever.
You were a wound that taught me
what healing could feel like.

This is my last goodbye.
Not a whisper—
a promise.

Because I once let you carve yourself into me—
but now,
I reclaim the space.
And that—
that is the most beautiful thing
I have ever done.
My healing journey over the years. It's very long but trust me. It is worth it.