do not wish for unrequited love

and maybe I still love you. 

maybe every time I hear your name,

something catches in my chest

and my throat feels tight

and I feel like the world is ending for a second.

I laugh along with them when we talk about you,

it seems they have forgotten how much I cared,

they can’t see the knife stabbing into me every time I hear your name.

perhaps they think I forgot you, who you were, who you became, 

but every time I hear your voice, it’s an unimaginable ache 

from when you accidentally dropped my heart without hearing my screams. 

because it’s been six years, and I loved you too much to forget you

after one day of falling from hope into that realization

that we were never meant to be.

do not wish for that “unrequited love” that is so romanticized in fantasies,

do not wish to love or be loved, 

because when they drop you, 

without even turning to look at your heart which now rests on the ground

you will lose yourself in loss, claim you are over it, and then continue to love

as you always have, 

but the only difference is that 

you will be

broken.