Runaway by Leila Greiss

"you know i still love him."
as if your slurred speech and the sparkling ring on your left hand hadn't spoken for itself.
you took a sip of your drink to hide the well of tears in your eyes, but i saw them. i saw them the same way that i keep seeing that cold winter night. the night that changed everything.
six months later, and i'm still held as a prisoner to your mistakes. if freedom is real, i've never know reality. and all i know now is that i need you, and you're sitting in the booth across from me, but it's not really you.
it wasn't really you that drove away and never looked back either. it was the fear, and the tears, and the alcohol. they pressed the gas and you were swept away in your lies.
and here you go, lying again with every smile that crosses your lips. as if i could ever believe that "you're doing fine." because if you're doing fine than my world isn't falling apart. but we can both see the threads unraveling in the blanket that brought me home from the hospital eighteen years ago.
yet here we are, sharing a meal and swapping stories as if we weren't ghosts of two people who once were. but truth is, the ghosts are here and your eyes aren't the only thing that are haunted. ask them if they made themselves at home in my dreams, because they've certainly occupied the space.
"i know, you've told me."
you wear it on your finger, and your sleeve, but you didn't wear it on a bumper sticker the night you left us behind. and maybe he is the one who got away.
but you're the one who ran away.

About the Poet:

Leila Greiss is a 20 year old nursing student passionate about mental health advocacy, poetry, the color yellow and using her personal story to help others find healing. Since a young age, she has loved to read and write poetry, and now her inspiration is drawn from stories of her childhood trauma and the journey of redemption that it’s taken her on.