Co-ping

I hate you the most when I really need you

And you're there like you've always been

Like you're still my best friend and we can face anything together

Like I never left,

Like you never let me..

Like we didn't have to let the story end

And maybe there was still a chance for happily ever after

Something about the softness in your eyes

Or the secret in your smile

Suddenly you didn't seem so evil

I wept, and you held me closely

Lips whispering in my ear,

"You'll always be family"

Heart screaming,

"I'll always love you"

Some things really don't ever change

Because you've always loved me most when I needed to be saved

I only crave you like my last cigarette

When I see you making someone else happy

Giving them that fix you used to give me,

Or when I smell you and momentarily

I am tempted by the familiarity

My fingerstips itching to paint you in my past regrets

I hate you most when I see you growing into the man I always wished you had been with me

Instead of that arrogant boy with his pocket full of insecurities

I wish I was the love instead of the lesson

And I didn't have to see my old smiles on your new girl's face

Because as you fell so easily into the next best thing

I let these wounds cripple me into trust issues and triggered intimacy

New walls where there had been bridges

In the end, they all found a way to burn to the ground

Settling into the smoke of our hopeless romance

Until the fog lifted and all that was left behind were the ruins of our smashed pumpkin carriage

And a glass slipper shiv buried into my peasant heart

Sometimes I fantasize,

What if things hadn't gotten so torn between us?

What if we could have been the family we had dreamed of for our son?

Truly, it was never my fate to fall like this forever

Because where I thought I needed love,

I really needed the lesson

Needed this door to close, in order for my eyes to open

There is no fairy tale ending

There is no ending at all

We just kind of keep going

Only loving one another through the sparkle in our son's smile

The goofy studder of his laugh

Marvelling through him at the beauty of our crumbled past

Understanding that us growing into who we needed to be

Meant growing apart from what we once had