How do you measure love?
Is it the number of times I pick up my pieces – little bits bouncing off the just cleaned floor
We’ve always been into drama that way
Or the count of times I hit the wall you’ve put up – there are no doors or windows, except for the times your eyes betray your plans and you ask me to stay
Do I measure it in the number of times I imagine your face in the middle of the day, or times when I force myself not to?
That sinking feeling when I hit the bed and sense the “you shaped” empty space in my life
Meals I’ve refused, walks I didn’t take, songs I have decided to now forget – surely that must count
Perhaps it’s the little wins, spans of not thinking and good naps and the handful days I celebrate
How do you measure love?
I counted the corpses yesterday
As I lined them in order – from before I knew you to now, a new one falling with every little death
Hitting the ground so hard it shook, me along with it
They deserve honorable goodbyes I’ve decided, all of them
The me that did not know you
Me that had never seen you
Me that stood next to you while you spoke to others
Me that bloomed when you smiled
Me that fell in love with you
And the one that watched as you let me go
I try to remember good things about them
But that’s the thing about death – it takes away the person, and most of what they were
Happy, confused, ecstatic, did not have eyebags – that’s all I recall
I wonder if I’m done mourning or if I’m not her anymore
Maybe love is measured in the countless deaths
Of hopes and spirits till you reach the end
It’s measured in the number of hours you stand in the rain
Numb
Trying to feel something, just anything really to fight the pain
I measure, just how much and how many, and high and low and big and small my love is
I worry, for the number of years and cities and countries and coffee shops it’ll stain, this love
I want to stop
To pause and think for how long I’ll stand
But right now, I’ve got a funeral to plan
