Again

I reached out to you,

already wishing you were somebody else.

Already trying to shape you

for a hole you didn’t fit.

I laughed at all your jokes,

built friendships and shared stories,

but I was somewhere else —

flipping through memories like a scrapbook,

hoping for one of the pages to stick.

You smiled like you didn’t know,

and maybe you didn’t —

maybe you thought

I was there for you to keep.

But every moment that you and I shared,

was just an attempt to put back together what I lost,

a way to pretend it hadn’t all slipped through my fingers.

I built these moments with you

the way a man rebuilds a house

on broken land—

knowing the cracks would spread,

but still hammering the nails in anyway.

This isn’t just to the girl who I happened to call mine.

It’s for every girl who ever caught a little piece of me,

every heart that thought I might be a suitable home,

and found nothing but dust left in their hands.

I wanted to mean it.

I wanted to stay.

I wanted to be someone who cared.

But wanting doesn’t build anything real.

And you just can’t hold onto something that was never fully there.

You deserve someone here.

Someone whole.

Not someone still reaching backward

every step.

I’m sorry.

I was always sorry.

I never learned how to be anywhere

but back there.

Written 4-28-2025