seventeen

so easily it would be for me to go back to the place i once called home
to the place i once thought was so comforting
to the tarnished soul that i wanted to polish
right when i feel myself being sucked into you like a vaccuum
i have to touch the wounds you left me with from the thorns on your arms
your heart was as beautiful as a rose but the thorny branches i had to claw my way through just was not worth it
i am scarred by you and now that you see me finally blooming you reappear
seventeen showing up on street corners, scribbled on bathroom walls, in closed apps on my phone
please stop chasing me
i have learned how to let you go... now go
leave me here in my peaceful serenity
my lost pieces have found their way back to me but not without first realizing my worth
now i know you aren't worth my time, nor love, nor attention
so why does my mind flash images of you, sound clips of your laughter
or is it my own, i just don't know anymore
you were my world... constantly circling around you for so many years
i saw you as my earth, the solid ground i walked on
when the earth would quake i blamed myself for causing it
my stubborness caused the ground i walked on to shake and to make it stop i had to sit silently and give in to your bullshit
which was everything you were then.
you call me now telling me the lessons you have learned
how you need this or that from me and still i cannot tell you how much i never needed you
i didnt need you to come in and destroy the little me i had left
i cannot tell you to leave me alone seventeen
i scream it into my pillow at night when the rest of the world is sleeping
i cry tearless cries when no one is looking
they cant know i still cry for the me i lost with you
nor the you i miss
i know i dont need you but the comfort your voice brings me is the only thing that grounds me sometimes and maybe it isnt comfort at all its just you
you know just what to say in the right moments even when those things you say tear through me and remind me of those thorns. those prickly rose bushes i fought for so long to just touch a single bud. now that i know my soul was those beautiful buds all along that your thorns kept me from. seventeen i want to see you differently. i do not want to hold who you are against you but i do not know how to see you as anything else that the best and worst thing that happened to me. the worst is what i see over anything else. you are an amazing number but just not my lucky one. release me from your grip now. i have no use for you anymore. without you my heart is in full bloom. i can live. i can grow.

i bloom and the thought of finding the me i have lost. i cant say that i will ever be free but i can look people in the eye now. i am not afraid of being touched or held. i am not afraid to speak the truth. i can be seen for the first time in my life. i am sitting here looking at twenty eights door with my hand on the knob ready to open it and leave the twenty seven behind and i can say i am happy to be here. in the last year i let seventeen go. if i did nothing in year twenty seven i did realize i am worth more than seventeen could ever give me. love will be ever present but that door is sealed. along with the last twenty seven years.