The times that I have refrained from saying your name are starting to wear me down. The number of nights I've sat awake with the fireflies in my hands and pondered where we went wrong are too many.

When I stopped carrying you and starting noticing that my bare feet were eroding in the mud they sank into and the fireflies left with your name on their wings I realized that I barely knew it anymore. I don't know if you know mine or if you are still as lonely as you were when we sat together in biology making fun of the kids who came to class high. Do you remember when we made crude jokes and fun of everyone who wasn't us to hide beneath our stinging hearts?

We were bad for each other. I loved you but that love poisoned my heart and my eyes stayed in your pockets with nothing to see but the widening black that existed there. I know I left you. I know I hurt you.

But the truth is that your hands hurt me. Your hands crushed my eyes in your pockets until I cried for relief and told you that you were right. Your hands wrung my neck until I said I loved you and your damn hands broke my ankles and left me crippled and far more alone than I had ever been before.

And you cried when I said I couldn't stay.

You left me because we both know you always hated feeling weak.

I cried when you said you couldn't stay.

You left me because we both know I was always the weak one.