the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper
2004-04-26 & 4:17 p.m.

everything i love is ugly, i mean really, you would be amazed. just do me a favor, it's the least that you can do, just don't treat me like i am something that happened to you. i am truly sorry about all this

in between the medina walls, when i could smell the ocean and hear the bells from the mosques, i would often forget about him. when he cheated on me, i felt empty but almost relieved; i had a reason to end it. he would be sobbing on the phone while my roommate would entertain me by dancing to some arabic pop song. i was removed from a situation i never really believed in. during the summer, the pangs were a little stronger but i could still watch the sun rise without deliberating my guilt. now, the poetry doesn't happen quite so easily, and turning away is a little harder. it makes it hard to eat when, for so long, you felt like you were playing a part in a movie.

so i let go the ratio of things said to things heard, as i leave you to your garden and the beauty you preferred. and i wonder what of this will have meaning for you when you've left it all behind. i guess i'll even wonder if you meant it at the time.

to him, i was someone who chased geese with him in a lost town somewhere outside of chicago. i was someone who spoke of other lands as though they made up who i was; i was someone who knew where she was going. he loved the me i always wished i was. he held on to the little things i would fling about: my love for the color red, the way i like to peel a clementine, the way i would mesh our fingers together. i wondered who he thought i was when you took out all the pedestal details.

and did i tell you how i stopped eating when you stopped calling me. and i was cramped up shitting rivers for weeks and pretending that i was finally free

when i passed the point of wanting to believe what i said to actually believing it, it was all too late for apologies. i have tried, but his eyes are blank. and i realize that he felt too much for too long, and i never understood. and when this all ends for good, when i leave this school for something called forever in three weeks, i wonder if i will ever see him again.

like how could you do nothing and say, i'm doing my best. how could you take almost everything and then come back for the rest. how could you beg me to say, reach out your hands and plead and then pack up your eyes and run away as soon as i agreed

what happens when you are the one who does nothing, when your words do not match your eyes nor your hands. what happens when all you want is to make up for your nothingness, when it all passes without the fervency you ache for. but there's nothing you can do, and so you have to watch the ends unravel until the world will never know the two of you together again. this all began with a whimper, and it will end as such.