stretching

I feel like a place people go to bury the love
they don’t want anymore, to plant things they know
they don’t have the time
to tend to.
And I know that I am more
than the sum
of all the people who could not love me,
but I am always quick to forget this.
In my sorrow, every fresh goodbye sounds more like an “I told you so.”
I hear it in the sound
of my own voice.
You said “sometimes people aren’t running away
from you,
they’re running away from themselves.”
But it never feels like that.
I see your good shoes stuck in my muddy earth.
I see footprints
stretching out away from me
and nothing else.