kerenchelsea: PLAYING 20 QUESTIONS WITH SOMEBODY YOU USED TO KNOW by Keren Chelsea ( @kerenchelsea...

kerenchelsea:

PLAYING 20 QUESTIONS WITH SOMEBODY YOU USED TO KNOW

by Keren Chelsea ( @kerenchelsea )

after Caitlin Conlon ( @cgcpoems​ )

1. Did the world stop turning? When I said your name for the last time, did the world stop as if to let you know you should treasure the moment? Did you? Treasure the moment, I mean? Did you hear your name roll off my tongue and wish it would never end?
2. How much does it hurt to have your heart ripped out of your chest? Your text did one thing: tore open the cages of my ribs and plucked the remainder of my heart. I can answer this question. Can you? Have you ever had your heart removed from your chest?
3. Did you cry? Did you cry? Did you cry?
4. I almost got on a bus for you. Almost jumped into uncertainty for you. Almost followed you home, hoping home was still a place I could belong to. Did you ever yearn for me this way?
5. When did things go back to normal? After the first night? The second? It took me three years to stop thinking about you; even now, I still write about what we could’ve been.
6. Do you know every poem I’ve written about heartache in the last three years is dedicated to you?
7. What do you miss the most? Sneaking inside classrooms and libraries, kissing without making a noise? Watching Harry Potter movies over and over until we memorized the words like lyrics to our favorite song? Holding hands and promising forever? Do you still honestly believe in that?
8. Didn’t you know that when you leave a poet half in love, you become immortal with her words?
9. Why did it hurt so much? Isn’t love supposed to be kind, to be patient, to be calm? I was so unkind to you; do you ever think about that? Do you ever blame me for half of our ruin?
10. How could it have been so easy for you to walk away, when it was the hardest thing for me to do?
11. How much anger did I bury in your heart? How much hate did I use to water the anger? How much pain did it cost to lose me? How much love did you lose when you left?
12. Did you ever think to ask me how much love I lost? Did you ever think to ask me how much it hurt?
13. I knew we were falling apart. I knew we were falling apart. I knew we were falling apart. I knew. But I refused to look at the cracks. How could you?
14. When you said forever, did you mean it? Do you still mean it?
15. Was it too much that I wrote every poem for you? Is it too much that I still write for you?
16. Did you read the poems? Did you cry? When you said you loved them, did you mean you loved them like you loved me? Did you mean you loved them the way you used to mean you loved me? Does it matter?
17. If you could relive it, would you?
18. If you could hurt me again, would you?
19. If you could take it back, would you?
20. If you could remove it from your skin, take the memory away, leave it behind as if it had never happened, would you? I don’t think I would.