I remember you. I remember the beauty in your eyes and your soul, I remember the smile, I remember your heart, I remember what I wanted to protect. I remember your big strong hands, your fair skin, marked by your clumsiness and pride. I remember your head it’s wiry curled crown. I remember all that you were and all that you could be. I also remember your good intentions and painfully, your innocence in all this.

I wish I could say it’s God’s fault for making you perfect. Just perfect for me. But He had other plans for you, plans that don’t involve me. Plans to prosper you and not to undo you with my love. My love for you consumed me, and threatened to consume you too, and everything about you. My love for you which is no more, except for the dregs that circle in my mind as the memories disappear of you and me, as one.

So I remember you now, but you don’t mean the same to me. You don’t feel the same to me. I remember you… but the love that kept you safe in my mind doesn’t protect you anymore, my forgotten love.

My heart forgot you, so my mind only knows what could’ve been all those times my hands slipped over exposed skin. My soul gave up on you, so it wants to corrupt you at any given chance now won. It must burn bridges you don’t even know, because if not, one day my mind will creep in and take what was never mine, just for fun. You didn’t understand the hope you inspired, the lust you fired up. Now the love that protected you is gone,  the monster unchained, but hopefully restrained. But not too quickly. Revenge sounds fun.

It doesn’t forgive as my heart does.. it doesn’t forget like my spirit does, it doesn’t forego as my soul does. My mind seeks vengeance for a heart that was broken. I know what it wants, but I’m not willing to give it. But sometimes it justifies well what might be worthy of damnation. Visions of what could be when my lips know yours for the first to the ten hundredth time. My hands free to know you with no pretense or barrier, with or without your permission. To take what was never consummated. To steal what was never meant to be mine, just because I can, just because I might. Reach out and grab it like eve did, take a bite my body craves, so that I can eat and I will surely forget it lies.

But i know better now. Wiser and stronger thanks to your necessary absence. But still tempted each time you lean in or reach for my hand on reflex, when your leg comfortably rests pasted to mine when seated side by side. I remember what they used to mean, but I remember it in passing, of what was, and what can never be.

Please let what’s left of you peacefully fade.