Souvenir

You don’t know what it’s like
so many nights
I would sit waiting for your call
and once I decide I don’t need
to hear your voice say my name…
there it is. Once a comforting
sound, now haunting, reminding
me of things I could never forget.
Off us. Or you and me. Together
but so far apart. Different. Stubborn.
If only…
You always seem to love me more
when I’m gone. That’s a sick sign,
I know. But still comforting on the
cold nights I sit alone in my tiny
apartment, tiny me, in this enormous
city. Sometimes I feel it will swallow
me whole. And it’s you I want near.
But you’re not here. You never will
be…and if I don’t come home, then
what? Years of phone tag? Or worse,
what if I did come home? Phone tag
replaced by occasional visits still void
of love? I can’t be with you there.
I can’t be with you when I’m here.
And I won’t let you keep my heart
as a souvenir
of the past and times we shared. It’s
mine and you have no right to it. So
don’t call when you notice I haven’t.
Stay there, it makes you happier than
I could. And let me go on being myself,
myself without you.
I like me better that way.