How Insensitive

Each setting of the sun,
minute and moment brings me closer to you.
I can feel the fire of your arrival,
itching underneath my skin,
and though I’m still lost in my lonely lullabies,
fast asleep by the time the day begins,
I wake up when I feel your hand in mine,
every time,
without fail.

You’re on the way,
and I don’t know if I will ever be ready, to just be happy,
because how can I learn to live anew, when all my ghosts gather by my bedside?
They stop the clocks, shaking me from my sleep at 3am every morning,
to remind me how many seconds have slipped through my shaking hands,
and how unprepared I am to be truly loved.

Last night,
I rose from my nightmares and noticed that I only ever cried when I gave myself a moment to meet my memories.
I cried for the girl who cried in dark, windowless bathrooms,
her panic, trapped in her throat, as she scrubbed her skin until it bled, to get foreign fingertips from her body.
I cried for how cruel I was.
How insensitive I must have seemed, when I stared back from the mirror,
unmoved by her tears. How cruel I was, when I made her go back to the bed that she shared with her greatest fear.

I will never talk to you about it,
and you’ll feel excluded,
untrusted,
my cruelty continuing,
tearing apart a new, untouched soul.
I’ll never apologise in person,
but your face will join my ghosts,
and I will never sleep again.