I See Myself In Her

-For Melissa She asked me how long does it take to heal In what time allotment, exactly, will it take For forgetfulness to become a reoccurrence A blessing for the haunted Memories that can be bleached off White sundresses put on in order to frolic On beaches with waves washing away Each grain of him How long did it take for you to get over him? Days? Weeks? A month or two? Hope shining like a naïve flashlight during the eclipse of hardest times Beaming on me, waiting for an answer How could I tell her, honestly, That it took me years To overlook the smallest details of his smile How he only has one dimple on the right side of his face The way his hands felt, every line and crevice of his fate Thought to fit mine perfectly? How could I tell her, truthfully That no matter how many times I washed my sheets I would catch the scent of him at 3:45 am, sometimes Or hear his faint tapping on my window When it’s really just, my imagination That she’ll spend months waiting for him to text her Call her, email her, think of her When really he’s lying in bed with another women but she refuses To believe that it’s over Or how my heart still aches, just a little When I hear he asked about me Or that he can no longer say my name out loud to our mutual friends Could I muster up the courage to explain to her That it took me 2 years, 3 months, and 16 days to realize The ugliness of being pathetic It was time to rise up and take the lead Time to forget all romantic casualties It’s only yesterday that I found myself straining to remember His faults, forgetting the man and only remembering the hero How could I break her heart for the second time by telling her The truth? She stood there patiently waiting for me To pull a metaphor out of a hat, something poetic Comforting, beautiful, reassuring I see myself in her Wanting people to lie to us to see the Zen in ourselves It’s like we’re all in the same play with the same roles but different names It takes time for each actor to fulfill the destiny Others emphasize while others downplay Moments in time