outgrown

i feel like people outgrow me
faster than they realize they need
me to begin with; a condolence,
a temporary remedy to the loneliness
they're drowning in until they learn
to swim and i become an inconvenient
extension to their tangled existence -
as if their minds are too impatient to
understand that, hidden deep inside
the buried soul of the one next to them
is a heart just waiting for someone to
hang on; to hang around; to stay.

there are a pair of jeans in my drawer,
buried beneath layers of black cotton shirts
and satchels of wildflowers
with holes in the thighs and missing belt loops
that i can't seem to get rid of -
for they remind me of you; of
sunflower days and raindrops on lips,
strawberry fingers and windswept kisses
and grass-stains on our elbows and
laughter in the air, fresh and clean and
innocent like the earth after rain.

there are stories that we have molded to
fit our wounds, bandages we imagine are
covering the shrapnel left by ones
who never learned that "loving"
is not irrefutably tied to "leaving";
we wrap ourselves in flowers and harness
the clouds to disguise the fact that we're
made for a soul just as broken as we are.

we lose ourselves in our brokenness,
lamenting the ones we've lost until
we realize that people outgrow people -
but what they don't understand,
is that maybe we never fit them to begin with.

january 24th, 2018 //