To my soon to be ex

I don’t love you anymore. I will always have love for you. But I’m not in love with you anymore.  I’ll probably understand it one day, when I have time to have time. I don’t understand it now. I’m too in it to see it. Maybe I’ll comprehend why I always wanted you to love me. Why I wanted to believe so bad that you would love me back with all my flaws. That if I prove I could act like you, and be like you, and sound like you, that maybe one day I could be part of you. I focused on loving you so much, for so long. I didn’t learn to love myself. I fell for you young, immature love. That head over heels, memorized your class schedule love. You’re too young to know what love is, that type of love.

My tears have been the storms after the monsoon. Shifting winds timed to political climates. I used to love you enough to weather the storms. I loved you in drought. I picked strawberries for you, I sold flowers at stop lights from concrete islands for you. Stood outside of home depot trying to sell my poems in the rain for you. I parted el rio bravo and walked across the desert as a toddler for you. Sold chiclets for you. Became a Doctor for you. Became a poet for you. But I’m never enough for you. I loved you with my veins open, with my heart broken.

I loved you so much I learned all about your history. About your forefathers and the foundation of the idea of you. I pledged allegiance to you. And maybe you didn’t promise me anything but I thought it was implied, that was my mistake, it was our fight in 2012. I had hope then, I thought the deferred action would allow you the time to try to learn to love me. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic like that.

I’ll walk away now, I got rid of all the things that remind me of you. The tv we turned off after Kendrick’s halftime televised revolution. The car that cruised route 66, Illinois to California. I’ll never forget sunsets in Malibu or drum circles in Venice. The smell of parade floats made of roses. We made a good life together, I wanted it to be forever. You wanted to take it two years at a time. I didn’t make a back up plan, I never saw the future without you.  I’ll think of you I’m sure. I’ll cry for you I’m sure. I don’t know that I’ll miss you or how you made me feel. I don’t even think you think of me as I stand completely naked before you.

I am who I am because of you, and maybe I make it without you and maybe I fall flat. But I don’t love you anymore, not the way I thought I once did. I don’t know if I wish that things would’ve turned out differently, but don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone. And maybe you’ve been gone and I just hadn’t realized it. Perhaps I’m just finally ready to accept it. I wasn’t meant for you. And you weren’t meant for me. I’ll think of you when I hear love songs. When I whisper goodnights into the ether for you.

I’ll think of you when I’m asked where I’m from. In the place where I should belong but won’t belong. When I stick out like a sore thumb. When I can’t translate “sore thumb”. I’ll think of you when I board the plane. When I smile all scared and brave and free. When I leave the golden cage. I’ll think of you then, I’ll remind myself to think of Texas and their court circuits. Of kids in cages. Of bombs over Baghdad. Of genocide in Palestine. I’ll think of that too. I wish all the best for you. I’ll always have love for you  but this is where I leave you. This is where I go cliché and find me. Where I try to forget you and I finally choose me. Farewell america, I deserved better. I learned to live tired, I adapted to staying hungry, I am poor and thriving, pay check to pay check, american dreaming, barely sliding by  . Let me just breathe free. I’ll stay tired, poor and hungry. Please just end my longing, my yearning to breathe free.