The Ghosts of You | Poetry
Haunted but moving forward
It’s not that I don’t like people.
Trust me, when I don’t like people,
there isn’t any doubt.
I just know that people hurt me.
Worse, it’s not an intentional thing.
You do not think enough of me
to even realize that your actions
do such harm to me.
But because of you,
because of the scars I bear from you,
the wounds that bleed from you,
I hold people…outside.
It sucks.
Every day,
I have to remind myself
that my husband is not you.
That my friends are not you.
That people who have endured
the stupidity of my need
to protect myself
from the ghost of you
are not you.
Any of you.
I have to remember
that you are part of my past,
and while experiencing you left a mark,
it does not define me.
You may have carved a niche in my riverbed,
but the water flows ever onward regardless.
You are a whisper in the forest of me,
and your time has passed.
And this is me,
remembering that I’ve moved on.
- clhuth