Your love was the water to my parched lips

The soil to my garden

The coffee to my early morning

The candy to my sweet tooth

The everything to my everything

I loved the way your mouth curved up into a perfect smile

The sound of happiness when you came home

The feeling of your arms around me

The sweet taste of your laugh on my tongue

The smell of coffee from your favorite café down the street

And although it’s easier to convince myself

that you never loved me back

I think you did

at one point

But you stopped one day

The day when I went from being the sole person you saw

to being just “one of them”

The day when my candied lips

became as bitter as the coffee you loved to drink

on dates at your favorite café where we never spoke

I tried to make my lips taste like icing

but to you they were as cold and flavorless as ice

You stared at them with blank eyes

that looked through me to the warm laughs of the past

instead of at me

where you would just see the empty stares of the present

I tried to hold on but that only made me fall faster

My white knuckles laughed at me and said

“girl, your time with him is up”

I tried to keep the sweet taste in my mouth

long after the candy had dissolved

When in reality all I could taste was you

and your bitter coffee