colder

I was careful today,

i tried to be,

and while i often try to be careful

it's rare that i succeed.

due to luck,

i was careful today.

a tiny little blurry mark you'd only see if you looked for it.

i knew you'd look for it.

i waited.

waited to get a confirmation that you had the opportunity to look for it.

it wouldn't have been much to you. in my imagining

just a reminder.

after looking and wondering

i check

there was no opportunity to see what i'd documented

no opportunity to see the proof that you still have a residence in my life

(as much as i've tried to root it out and you've tried to rebuild it)

you made the choice,

i'm not sure how hard it was for you.

to me it feels like you swept out the dust that was my residence in your life

four broad sweeps and i was gone.

if i'm truthful

(which i'm often not)

i know it was a choice you made to stop obsessive tendencies you know weren't good for you.

and now there's

the emptiness that used to be your place.

your house in my life.

one built with more texts than i could count

more promises and hopes than i know

lit with lava lamps and ram sticks

furnished with soft blankets and stuffed sushi and dinosaurs

filled with smiling faces

portraits filling the walls, there's ekin-su, inaki, squidward, dylan and laura, the friends we'd made.

music filling the place.

it's dark, quiet and empty now,

clearing out.

i put the eviction notice up,

i wrote the documents,

and how can i sit on the bare floor crying as i realize it's empty.

you moved out slowly, not all at once. first just you moved out. but you didn't take our chair.

i'll miss all those things about that place.

it was warm there, too small for me but warm.

but what i don't miss yet but i know will come and i don't know if i'm ready for.

is when the power goes out.

when the place is no longer warm and bursting and a safe place with love squeezing out of every crevice,

when the power goes out

and when i'm cold in my life,

i can not retreat to it, hoping it will sheild me.

it will not be warm. it will be cold and empty.

all the things that i used to be a part of will belong in someone else's life.

i don't know if i'll call in the wrecking ball,

for now this place is empty, but i can still feel its warmth.

a place i still have, although its now just beams and a roof.

i'm sitting there now.

telling myself not to reach out and put the house on the market again.

tell the owner the house wasn't too small and it was perfect and you can stay in my life forever.

i know it's not true.

i was cramped in that house.

often trapped on the couch because the living room was so small there was no floor in between the couch and the TV.

i would bump my head on every doorway because i was unwilling to bend down. i needed this house to fit me.

i still know i do.

i need a place with ceilings i cant quite see the tops of.

a place with pools i can't touch the bottoms of.

that's why he was evicted.

that's why

it's colder.

that's why i'm pressed to the ground, soaking up the warmth i know can not last, in a place that's no more than beams and a roof.