Why am I not dead yet, you may ask, when the bullets bleed red, and the stones have turned to glass and the pathways we once walked are left shattered in the past. When the flowers in the garden are the red of blood, but not roses, only dyed with all the mass exodus of reality and twisted into thorns and left to prick whoever touches them like broken hearts.

Why am I not dead yet, when sleepless nights breed sleepless mornings and bleed into days left half mad with exhaustion. And the pain in my pain grew itself its own pain, and gave it a name to whisper after dark, when only it listens. When the sides of my chest feel like they'd like to split open, and my heart wants to tear itself out only to be free of the cage breathing fire upon it.

Why am I not dead yet, when the loves I love love another, and I can't even imagine myself as their lover. When the best I can do is try to be their friend, only to have them shy away and return to those that mean something, because I was too slow to mean anything.

Because in my world those I love are so limited. But I'm ever too slow, and I watch them follow down paths leaving me uninvited, while I close the gate to the garden one would have me walk down, because in all of my happily ever afters, I just can't picture you beside me like that. When breakups lead to stalemates, and no one is happy. And I torment myself under a pile of what-ifs. Because if I had let you, you would have been my one. I could have been your one. But I couldn't.

And you deserve better than my feeble attempts at loving you back, while my mind says you're good, and my heart won't want you back. 'Cause you see, all my heart wants are the things it can't get, the people it doesn't know, and the life it won't fit.

All my heart wants are the "I love you's" whispered on lost tongues in the night, that I know no one will hear but me, and I know I'm too much of a coward to say. Because I've been on the end of one of them before.

You were little, and I was ever littler. Barely a boy and a girl playing at a game we thought was romance, where you held my hand, and I held yours, and you said I love out in the forest.

And boy, I thought you were crazy. And I know you knew that right then, because the moment you said it, I told you you didn't. I told you that you didn't know what love was, and I know now you might believe me, because I saw the ways you said it without saying it later when we were older, in the things you did, and the ways you were. And I loved you too, as fiercely as a friend can love another. But not the way you wanted. Not how it seemed to matter.

So the lines of our heart drifted apart.

Ours wasn't a messy breakup, no one threw anything, no one called someone a name meant to haunt. We tore nothing of each others apart.

It was only me, saying how sorry I was.

Only me watching the one person who'd picked me, unpick me. Because I'm not good at being in love, and I'm not what you'd hoped, dreamed for, or expected. I'm nothing if different, and I'm different if anything.

So the longest friendship of my life ended. And now we spend awkwardness like a currency every time we meet, and I can feel it steal into my heartbeat like a drummer too drunk to keep pace with the parade, and I wonder if I make you feel this way.

How many sorrys, is too many sorrys? And what number too few. I know you always said it too often for everything you you used to do. But in the end I got my turn, as I lost the only kid who'd stayed my friend through move after move, and years spent lost in a darkness where there is no light-switch.

You're never going to read this, but I hope you get that girl you like if she ever falls from the side of that other guy. And I hope you two are happier than we would have ever been.

So why am I not dead yet? When alone seems my partner most likely in life, and every time I find someone they've already been swept away. How hasn't broken hearts bled away the light inside me, like water on a candle, and drown out my soul in its twisted scandal.

Because of tomorrow, and the day after that. Because if I'm no ones choice then, there's another day, and I can make it though that. Because tomorrow isn't a Thursday or a Friday, its the day after this. So if you can make it to tomorrow, you can make it forever. Because tomorrow isn't going on holiday. It won't leave you to go watch the Macy's day parade, its not in line for a mall Santa, and it won't take the week off on spring break no matter how badly you want

Tomorrow is there for you how today is not, so pick up the pieces and put them in a pot, press soil over it and let a seed drop. Because on a tomorrow a flower will grow over that broken heart.