Being honest with myself
I think we could survive
because all the pain I’m grappling with
comes from somewhere else.
I give and give and give some more
to get so little in return
so I couldn’t help but break apart
when you had to break away.

I don’t know if that means we
could come back together just like that.
I’d like to think I’d be able to
but I won’t let myself be weak.
There may be no recovery
for the bullets we exchanged
or the sacrifices required
to carry on.

I’m sorry but in this time of survival
I had to throw a lot of things away,
cards and notes, all of it really,
including our precious little purple book
passed back and forth,
a diary of our romance,
because the reality I need to prepare for
can’t get hung up on these heart-traps.

Just seems we failed to live up
to the beauty of the idea,
a damn shame for the final page;
a question of eternity.

All of it we could have again
if all the forces line up right.
If my argument was
that love would find a way,
what stops you from reflecting that
back upon my forgiveness?
Maybe my fight
is the answer to our riddle?

But first I have to make you prove your love
to me, and that’s where you will fail.
If I know you, you’ll get caught
on the best sides of me I showed,
assuming they’ll still be there, and they are
but they’ll be hiding away from you.
I won’t be the gentleman you came to know.
You’ll have to bring him back to life.

You won’t know how, because you weren’t wrong in this
and neither am I, a true tragedy.
And that’s why the final entry in our little purple book
is my conviction, passing it to the trash.