Departure

i'm trying to get into spoken poetry, and this is my first attempt on writing something meant to be performed. this is the first complete draft, and i know i still have a lot to learn, but i can't wait for feedback..

When it occurred to me that everybody thinks I left you
I read all your letters again,
the ones in my bedside drawer waiting to be showered with dust—
the ones I left hanging on threads of silence.
I reread them: from the how are you's and where have you been's?
to the words I know you would've spoken calmly no matter how belligerent,
words that entail your bitter accusations of my absolutely horrible decision of vanishing.
I was the best thing that's ever happened, you wrote;
at least some at some point of his life.

It's true: I didn't grab the chance to say good-bye,
and knowing you, maybe you still think of me
when you open your eyes to the mist of the morning,
or when you recite the names of angels on idle afternoons,
or when you sit at dinner tables covered in a feast of chips and carton packs of juices
that can only nourish bones and brains with too much salt and sugar;
maybe you're still wondering why there's no longer a bubbly girl to sing you a happy day;
and someone would catch a glimpse of you—
(I'm not sure anymore if your reveries of me would revel your face with a smile,
or if these reflections would only tighten your mouth, stern),
but either way I'm sure your countenance will tempt a mouth to open,
prompting dozens of other mouths,
spreading my unforgivable atrocity throughout the town:
I have left you! they say,
unashamedly, unreasonably ruining something they're too shy to pronounce,
but it's something beautiful all right—
something almost almost perfect.

I'm not surprised to watch everybody come to your sympathy:
people love to scratch the surface of truth.
But a peek cannot tell our whole story.
A peep through the whole cannot tell that you came to me
because I was your only hope, your only rope out of your cistern of misery;
that I was the only shovel down the tunnel of your romantic loneliness
(and you willing to break my neck against a stone,
to rust me out as long as you save yourself and see light);
that I was the crutch you held onto as you flail around with two well feet.
No; a glance cannot tell everybody that I was the pills you consumed at night,
but only temporarily relieving the pain, lacking the power to heal,
and by morning you would've pissed me off your systems

I admit that in my foolishness I accepted to be these things: because I thought I could do it.
I thought I could be your heroin(e)—
I thought I could hunt down the pieces of your heart and put them back together;
I thought I could make you forget the girl who shattered your heart in the first place
so you could love me back,
but if some genie were to appear right now and grant you one wish
of being with someone, I knew it wouldn't be with me
because the only thing I could do was to make you fall in love
with the impossible possibility of us mutually falling for each other.

Maybe you still remember that dawn, the first time I let you hold me,
when I said I would do anything to make you happy.
I was careful to make conditions because I thought my intentions
were beautiful; but I realized that the question is not
whether I would keep my promises or not;
but if there really was anything I could do to make you happy.

We sat our day away, soon both tired of the frustration,
and as the sun set you hummed a poem to me about the pebble and laws of gravity
as you rest your head on my shoulder,
the sleeve of my shirt getting wet with your tears;
you were whispering
(hums: some enchanted evening...)
you were whimpering
once you have found her, never let her go..
And I knew, of course, you haven't.
I felt the distance between our hearts widen,
and in moments like this I told myself:
it didn't matter if everyone would think I left you,
because I was certain in moments like this, I knew:
you were the one who kept abandoning me
for another place,
for another time—
for another universe...

so I'm sorry if the last straw has been drawn
and I had to burn our bridge down
I don't think I can survive another one of your desertions;
I don't want you back in my life just so you could leave me again.