On Loving Someone You Can No Longer Have

on loving someone you can no longer have

beat me to it - brendan maclean/catalog of unabashed gratitude - ross gay/quietvoiced/it ends or it doesn't - caitlyn siehl/white ferrari - frank ocean/l.a. winter - louisa melcher/schuyler peck/honeybee - trista mateer/letters from medea - salma deera/harrow the ninth - tamsyn muir

[id: ten screenshots of lyrics and quotes. they read:

image 1: it's not that i'm alone/it's you're not here.

image two: i am sorry. i am grateful./i just want us to be friend now, forever./take this bowl of blackberries from the garden./the sun has made them warm./i picked them just for you. i promise/i will try to stay on my side of the couch.

image three: (12 minutes ago) she said: you're my favorite friend/i'm sorry that i want you like a lover.

image 4: it ends or it doesn't./that's what you say. that's/how you get through it./the tunnel, the night,/the pain, the love./if the sun never comes up,/you find a way to live without it./if they don't come back,/you sleep in the middle of the bed,/learn how to make enough coffee/for yourself alone./adapt. adjust./it ends or it doesn't./it ends or it doesn't./we do not perish.

image 5: i care for you still and i will forever/that was my part of the deal, honest/we got so familiar.

image 6: january 8th, i put on the dress you hate/laugh at my own jokes/fake a smile for my date/how do i love myself and not love you?/you made me too specific to be known by someone new.

image 7: i don't miss you. i don't. but it's hard to listen to songs from that time, the seven years of it, and not see the sunlight fade on that highway leaving vegas from your passenger seat. feel the hours we still have left to go -- the road ahead of us, the hum of a conversation too far now to hear. your shape and mine and how we existed in that moment, in love. when there was nothing other than the steadying idea that yes, of course i'm here, so yes, you are too. the anticipating rise of summer or a reunion of your family that felt like mine, or the two weeks of breath before school starts again. how to watch it all and not feel a twinge, never longing for it back. i can remember you, feel our ghosts in a room above my eyes and recognize we will never know each other like that again. allowing myself to exist in the memories i don't love anymore. it's okay. it feels as real to me as it did then, and i'm glad it was beautiful when it was. but there's nothing here i'd return to. dec. 14, 2020 [schuyler peck]

image 8: i promised no more poetry/i'd rather think of this/as a confession:/you are still the first person/i want to share new things with.

image 9: the centre of every poem is this:/i have loved you. i have had to deal with that.

image 10: you hating me always meant more than anyone else in this hot and stupid universe loving me. at least i'd had your full attention. /end id]