I Loved You

I loved you.

I hope you know that, I hope you know that I loved you.

Despite what happened, despite that your birthday is during spring time, I still love the winter. Because it is the season before you birthday, the one we would cuddle together during and keep each other warm, where I could talk to you about the birthday gift you wanted.

Now I sit here, and my toes ache, they're curled in my shoes, and they hurt.

The silence is heavy and it hurts my ears, the snow is cold and the buildings loom over me as if the world has turned against me. And after losing you, I feel like it has, I feel as if the entire city of Detroit is a grave. A white, distant grave that you lay six foot under, trapped, because it has yet to become spring time.

In the distance, I can hear cars. Their horns are loud and the lights are blinding to me. I feel completely lost without you, without you by my side and to hold my hand. My hands are nestled in my pockets and they feel lonely, I know my knuckles are white, because I always squeezed my hands to hard, you say. I always curled my fingers awkwardly into my palm, especially when it was cold.

I remember when we would take walks by the bakeries and small shops, with the trinkets in front of the window and the warm insides glowing, spilling their light onto the soft snow. The sidewalk in front of me, the one we walked so many times before, I can see faint foot prints, scratches of paw prints and smears of mud against the concrete surface. It feels empty without your stupid black shoes on the pavement.

Those stupid black shoes that I got you, that I told you to get rid of after you ran through the mud to get my hat that blew away in the spring wind.

Christmas just ended, and I got you another Christmas gift, and I put it under the bed, just in case you came back to get it, to come back and get me. You took those stupid black shoes, you took all your money, all your belongings, you took my heart. I never got to hear you say good bye, and some part of me doesn't like that. Some part of me hates that about you, that you never even said good bye.

Because sometimes, like now, I wait on the sidewalk and look down, standing in front of the small shop where you got my scarf that I am wearing now. I wait here and listen to the sound of my heart beat, and it sounds so lonely as it echoes in my ear, it should be your voice that I am hearing in my ear. It should be your hand warming mine, not my pocket.

I don't know why you picked her, why you smiled at me and told me you loved her. I could read something else in your eyes, I know I could have if I looked hard enough, but all I saw was winter. Your eyes were blue, they were beautiful and they were like the winter I am standing in, now. And that is why I like winter, because it comes before spring, it is like your personality.

It is like your personality because Detroit is like a grave to me, a grave you sit six food under, that your soul is frozen underneath the ice, and I am scared that when it becomes spring, you will leave me again.

I loved you more than she did, and we both know that. I know that you were dangerous, I know that your eyes were like winter, but I knew your heart was like spring. She didn't know this. I knew this, I let your heart blossom, I let it break through winter. That I why your eyes were blue-green, because winter came first, and then spring time came. My love helped you blossom.

Hers didn't. So why did you pick her, why did you leave me in Detroit? Why is it, when you left me, you put on the shoes I got you, not the ones she gave you, and you took the lighter I gave you, not her? Why is it, when you looked at me, your eyes were more green?

Why is it, when you told me you loved her, your eyes were blue? Why were they not green, like they are when you are with me?

She creates a grave out of you, I know this, as I stand in Detroit. I create life in you, so please, when you look in the mirror and you find that your eyes are still blue, because I know you liked them when they were more green, please think of me.

And please know, that I still love you.