Lacking Eloquence

I tried to write something eloquent.  I tried to make the simple complex.  I tried to make the ugly beautiful.  And still I stare at an empty page while I drown in emotion.

Do I write of the pain?  How I sat there tonight and for the first time, you didn't fall in across from me?

Do I write of the haunting space?  How you're in this town and yet, you feel so completely absent?

Do I write of the distance?  How there are 1,700 miles between me and a possible future I may never get the chance of taking?

Or do I write of the confusion that stirs when all of these problems slam into my heart at once?  How I miss you and want to know what I've done?  How I want to see you?  How I want to see him?  How I feel twisted for wanting you both?

The pain is physical.  An aching chest.  A shaking hand.  A pounding head.  A weak heart.

And still the page sits empty and still I sit alone and still he is not here and sill you're gone.

Tainted Castle

I did the unthinkable and let you inside my make-believe castle.  I showed you the walls made up of words, the characters that live in my head, the never-ending stories that hang like tapestries at every turn.
You made it beautiful.  You introduced colors to my black and white world and built new spaces in my head that I'd never dared to explore.

Then you left.
Everything is tainted now.
You tracked your footprint through all my thoughts and somehow, through my heart.  The words don't seem right anymore.  Not the ones I picked, no the ones you gave.  And I begin to wonder if they'll only ever be right with your presence.

I wish you had burned it to the ground.  Every inch of me and my many made-up lives.  I wish you had set fire to the paper walls and left me with a charred, empty mess rather than this.
Instead you made it better and added color and life and then you left me alone to deal with it all.  I thought I had found a collaborator.  I thought I'd found a like-mind.  A friend.

Now nothing comes out right and the pen in my hand is heavy and nothing feels the way it should.
I keep waiting for the numbness.  I keep waiting for the fire.  I keep waiting for the end of this maddening confusion.
But my chest still hurts.  And my words are still wrong.  And my fingers still shake.  And the tears still come.
And this make-believe castle I used to love so much is haunting me with the memory of your influence.