I know it from the start

I knew it from the start. A bitter streak in the sugar. But at first it is shiny and new and glorious. You tell me over and over that I am the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. That you exist to talk to me. That I remind you of a sky full of peach and yellow and pink. You worship me with your words and I dare to believe I am all the things you say I am.The words roll off your lips so beautifully and your eyes are so clear, so open that even I, jaded and cynical in all of my doings with others, allow myself to crack a little. The shadow of a sunrise starts in my mind and a little light breaks in.

I knew it from the start. Things start to crash. Words are words, nothing more. When the flow of late night entreatments begins to die, when I can't make you laugh anymore, when you are "too tired" and "too busy" to say hello, let alone compare me to that painted sky, when I spend hopeless hours trying to fill the gap you have suddenly left in our conversation. One night I say to you, through drunken courage...you talk to me differently...you tell me you are sure I'm acting crazy. You checked me in, you checked yourself out and now I am waiting hopelessly at the aiport for a plane that is never coming back.

I knew it from the start. Suddenly everything is worse because of you. You used to make my stomach rise into my throat with excitement. The only thing rising now are those old familiar 2am tears. And I am a little more beaten, a little more bruised and a little something else is taken from me. I am a broken sail of a woman, helplessly flapping in the breeze. And I watch you leave, by increments, and I can do nothing but let that icy wind blow through the breaks you left in me.