Bookends

So today the new Taylor Swift album came out

and I felt my stomach split open—

because the last time,

the night before her last release,

you dropped me like a song cut mid-verse,

sentences flooding my phone

until there was nothing left but silence.

This evening, I sat parked

in the exact same spot,

the same cracked pavement beneath me,

the same ghosts buzzing in my chest—

and the memory of you,

fingers on your screen,

spelling the end of us

in a barrage I couldn’t stop reading that fateful March day. Fuck you for trying to kill me when I was already 6 feet under and dying inside. How could you do this? How did you do it? You’ve got a lot of balls. 

It’s strange how places

don’t stay neutral—

how they turn into grave markers,

like bookends for a story

that barely had a middle,

just a beginning I replay,

and an ending that still burns my throat.

Now every song sounds like you,

every lyric claws at the bruise

you left across my ribcage.

The timing—

the timing—

it makes me paranoid,

like lightning could strike twice,

like the universe would dare to echo

the day I lost my friend.

And here I am,

pinned between two albums,

two release days,

two places that won’t stop bleeding—

bookends that close on me

every time I try

to shelve you away.Erase every painful thought of endings. Of losing you not once but twice.