On The Other Side of Pain There's Dying Stars

“Till the sky falls and stars begin to cry.”

“He’s gone.” They’d say, “he didn’t even say goodbye.”

Fabricated by my nostalgia and romanticized by my broken heart,

It’s reoccurring dream of mine.

A life where you and I never part.

Legend has it that it takes 21 days to get rid of a habit,

Three painfully long weeks that make it seem impossible to let something so sacred go,

And act as though – in the first place – you never had it.

It’s been 52 interminable weeks, and some more,

I’m just as broken as I was before.

My mother once told me that every time you touch something you leave a little bit of yourself behind,

Despite drowning myself in books, office chairs and places I’d always dreamt of seeing, why is solace is so hard to find?

Keeping myself busy means discarding every cell of you that inhabits my fragmented being into this new person I’m trying to be,

But the same image is lacerated in my head, you – the first time we met –

Smiling at me.

I think it breaks me a little more every time that sight comes alive in my mind,

I ache, like I’m swallowing dying stars,

But I could bear the pain over and over, again and again,

Because every time I think of you,

It hurts a little less.

Such a paradox it is, to miss someone who isn’t missing you,

But time has humbled me in a way I never knew.

I will have new constellations and flaws that you have never mapped,

New lips that never told you how they truly felt and new eyes that never cried tears as a result of your absence,

A new strong heart that never fell for those stars at the very start.

Altogether, I will be someone knew,

Even if I want to love you, I will know not to.

But those stars will continue to shine,

Bright, beautiful, and divine.

In gratitude, I will smile,

Looking back at the time when those stars were mine.  

As one celestial body dies,

Another one comes alive.

I will inhale those dying stars, in your absence,

And I will learn to thrive.