Relationship Status: It’s Complicated
We’re stuck in the purgatory between strangers and lovers,
A pair of ghosts haunting the same rooms, sharing the same bed,
But never quite brave enough to call it home.
We text all day, emojis and memes as our substitute for meaning,
Pretending to be close but always keeping a secret distance–
Every conversation another detour, another avoidance of the honest thing that’s trembling on our tongues.
We aren’t together, but we aren’t alone–just drifting in the no man’s land of “maybe,”
Waiting for someone to blink, to break, to call this mess what it is,
But neither of us wants to risk it, to shatter the comfort of uncertainty,
One foot always on the threshold, the other just a step away from running.
It’s a twisted dance, love diluted by options,
You hold my hand while texting someone else,
I stare at your face and see every road you might take, every person you could want instead,
We’re terrified to want too much, so we settle for wanting nothing at all,
Afraid that need will scare the other away, we hide behind irony,
Turn every real moment into a joke, call our longing “complicated” instead of desperate,
It’s easier to let the world think we’re cool with the ambiguity,
When the truth is, I want to be reckless–I want to risk it all on a love that isn’t rationed,
But every time I lean in, you lean away, and every time you reach for me,
I turn to stone, protecting myself from the fall I want more than anything.
Maybe we’re both cowards, maybe we’re both just tired,
Of being hurt, of hoping, of trusting something fragile,
We keep the status vague so we never have to face the real heartbreak of saying it’s over,
But every morning it gets harder to pretend–
The silence grows, the laughter dies, and even our bodies lose the heat they used to have,
We’re together and not together, lovers and not lovers,
Two satellites in endless orbit, always circling, never colliding.
Maybe one day we’ll get angry enough, brave enough, drunk enough,
To tear the mask off this mess and finally decide,
But for now, we’ll live in the in-between,
Unwilling to let go, unwilling to claim what we really want,
Chained to the comfort of not choosing,
And in this complicated state, we waste the best years of our lives.
Because the only thing scarier than heartbreak is admitting we want more,
So we’ll keep it complicated, keep it vague,
Letting life slip by, neither lost nor found,
Two ghosts in love, terrified of being real,
But even as we drift, we can’t stop looking for each other in the dark,
Clinging to the possibility that one day, one of us will finally speak,
And the story will end–or begin–at last.