Bohemian Delilah

It seems that each person I’ve loved has taken a bit of me along when she left. I build myself back up and move on, but I can always feel those little pieces tugging at me. Claiming me as their own. Sometimes stronger, sometimes less.

When I talk to you I get this feeling back. A little more whole, a little less scattered. But there are others who hurt me too much. The closer they are, the more I speak with them, the more it seems like opposing magnets pushing at the pieces I still have left. Shaking them free. The bits of me those people possess will never be closer to their source than the distance we keep.

Those are the most missed. Those are the people I loved with almost too much of myself. I looked up one day and found that I was no longer all of myself, that something had disturbed things within me. And, on those occasions, I ran, not bothering to take up those pieces of me nobody cared about losing. They settled, on their own, in the disarray I left behind, attracted to the pull of someone larger, more whole.

It feels like there’s hardly any of me left, sometimes. I don’t look out with the same strength I once had. I cry harder, scream louder, laugh with more feeling, but only to distract you from the fear I know you’d see if you looked too close. I’m slowly losing my orbit. I’m drifting further away. I’m unable to relocate that center.

Still, I miss those dangerous situations, where I almost let myself be absorbed by the pull.