The Tape

The Tape

by M. Allshouse

I cannot go on,
continue this malicious—
game—
of catch and release.

A malfunction of my heart,
constricted with grief,
unable to breathe.

My psyche is in shreds,
mosaic pieces you play with
each time you return—
pasting them in place
with hollow words
and well-placed praise.

I—
I love you.
And that’s the sorrow of it all.

I say I cannot go on,
but my heart is unwilling,
unrelenting
in its quest to rejoin our souls.

A sickening rhyme:
I love you.
You are mine.
I repeat it like a spell,
as though it might buy me time.

But our moments are borrowed—
crafted from stolen minutes
and fleeting days,
mere seconds between
when you return
and when you inevitably flee.

Is there nothing I can do
to make you stay?
Make you ache
at the thought of losing me?

It’s a one-sided love story,
and I used to think
those were the best kind.
Unrequited.
Unresolved.
Like it might shield a person from pain—
just one time.

But no one tells you
the ache,
the sheer turmoil,
that love given
and only half returned
can stir inside.

I feel
like I’m losing my mind,
like I belong in an asylum—
white sheets,
jackets that force me to hug myself
just to forget
how your arms made me blind
to every moment before.

Like we could hit rewind,
buy back the hours we lost
trying to find each other.

Like the universe was a tape,
and we controlled the remote.

But our tape feels broken—
it skips,
plays the same moment
over
and over
again.

A loop of love found,
then lost.
But not really lost—
just paused.

And God,
I feel like I’m stuck in that frame:
the moment our forever
was supposed to start.

And every time you find me,
it plays in a loop.

All I know is—
I love you.

And this pain,
this ache,
this fucking tape—
it’s excruciating.

But still,
I stay.

Waiting
for when you finally
hit play.