Giving Up Poem by Elizabeth Grace

I told you I could not do this again.
Ever.
You swore with every promise,
every broken-hearted smile
and every star in your eyes
that I never would have to feel this pain
because of you.

I told you of the demons I carried with me.
I told you of all the times I couldn't bear to be,
didn't want to see
for one more moment, and you
came in like lightning
and lit up my sky. I thought I
saw shadows of the future
and I thought that future
included you.

I feel like I can't breathe.
I dream of drowning every night.
I feel lost at sea, pulled
under
by a wayward tide.
I am gasping for air
as my lungs fill with water.
The sky fades to black.
With every breath I live,
with every breath I die.
This is the last time
I can bear to say goodbye.

Live your life the way
you want to.
Give up on everything
you could have been,
everything you were to me.
Give up the promises, and
give up the act.
Don't pretend I mattered to you.
You can carry on through life
pantomiming your way
and hoping nobody notices.
I feel like an idiot
for ever trusting you with my soul.
We made quite a side-show
didn't we?

So this is me,
tearing you out of my life,
taking razor wire to every memory
of us.
This is me scaling the
barbed wire fence
and escaping from the prison I am trapped in,
even though I know
guards with guns wait on the other side.
This is me
reclaiming my life
in order to be able to give up.
It's all the same in the end.
Barbed wire,
funeral pyre,
gone away.
You're gone anyway.