Love Poem: It Saw Me, But I Didn'T See It Coming
Riley Asher Nortje Avatar
Written by: Riley Asher Nortje

It Saw Me, But I Didn'T See It Coming

wondering how you could sleep so peacefully in my bed
or arms
while knowing the damage it’s doing.
wondering if whatever game you’re playing is worth losing 
one if not two people that care for you so deeply.
wondering what’s going on in your dreamscape
while i lie awake
watching missed call after missed call 
pop up and disappear on your phone.
wondering when you’re going to learn that you 
cannot always get what you want
and keep what you had because life 
just doesn’t work that way 
and then realizing that if you’re not going to learn now, 
then when?
wondering why i needed to be the one to 
teach you this lesson almost as if meeting me was your karma 
and in a way you were mine too.
wondering if sticking around may have been the biggest mistake we’d made in our story, because the timing was too precise
for us to claim the word 
goodbye.

too many synchronicities, 
too many glimpses of us 
in each other to have not met.
as if after blooming in chaos,
we found solace in each other
felt the warmth and light and breeze took a break from this reality
and went to our own
only to get lost in the disease that is unrequited hope
all because we didn’t know how to be broken on our own.
wondering if maybe we got attached to the knowledge that we were both drowning and we knew the other person was drowning 
but neither of us could do anything.
and yes, perhaps finding peace 
in the fact that we were drowning together 
is what inevitably kicked the typewriter off the table
and slaughtered the writer.
wondering if believing 
“i water you, you water me
we help each other grow”
turned into 
“i’m dying, and you’re dying
but at least we know we’re together and 
comfortable”.

wondering if we’ll ever figure it out.

~r.a