I realize I’ve slowly let these scars take control.

And I know you told me you’d always be there
And you weren’t, and
I know you said you’d always care for me
On a level not quite comparable to
The way the ocean so eloquently breathes,
Evenly with a heartbeat,
Flush with the rhythm of the darkness.

And I promise I never meant to become
The Beatles album you listened to while
You cried about how everything had gone
The complete opposite way you had wanted, and
I promise I never meant to break apart the
Love between you and John Lennon
But it had to be done, just Imagine-
Imagine if I had never let go of my love affair with music
And you had never let go of your love affair with me?
Imagine if my relationship between the words on a page
And the song that wrapped it’s melody around my fingertips
Had never had the chance to be
Let loose on the fret board – the fret board
Of the rest of my life?

And I know it’ll be difficult to understand how
All those days I was standing in the shadows, waiting
For our album to be created on its own,
It’ll be difficult to comprehend that
All these years I’ve been
Alienating myself, trying to find rhythm in our conversations,
And trying to take the days we held hands and laughed at the sunset
And turn them into something
So much more beautiful than any song that’s ever been played
On the radio

It was hard for me, too.
It was hard trying to somehow make sense of
The way your lips parted into an oval
Whenever you saw me, and
Trying so hard to research from my notes on
How your hand always found home in the small of my back
And how your feet always followed my shadow,
Creating a silhouette of one being
So incredibly beautiful that
You couldn’t help but ask me
When I had become so closely tied
To the depths of your heart,
Untying the ropes that were so tightly raveled
Around the melancholy melodies that you
Once called your dreams, but
Now call your fears.

And the songs I found in you were beautiful,
And there’s no doubt in my mind that at one time
You had sat in your bed
At three am
Crying yourself to sleep
With a pen in your right hand,
A notebook in your left
Threatening yourself that if you couldn’t find those
Words in the deepest parts of your soul that
The light that used to emanate from beneath the door
Would never shine through again

I know that you somehow wrote the songs
That now take residence in the chambers of my being
And encourage me through the day,
But I can’t help but bleed out
From the cuts you dug so deep in my
Skin, leaving the scars that have taken control of my whole life –

Those scars that at one time screamed at me
That I was a dreamer.

But let me promise you one thing.

I’m not the only one.