We talked about life

and you told me how I should live it.

But as I watched you live yours,

you did everything you told me not to do.

You were everything you didn’t want me to become.

I watched you live your life,

and it wasn’t how I wanted to live mine.

But I watched you.

Watched

and listened and soaked it all up.

Your actions were ingrained in me,

and I grew up living in the pieces of your life.

The pieces of the life you didn’t want me to have.

You didn’t want my life to be like yours,

so you told me how to live my life.

But everything you told me about how to live my life

was drowned out by the music.

That loud, roaring, inescapable music

of the life you didn’t want me to have.

And because I couldn’t hear what you said

I could only watch your lips move.

And while I could see how hard you were trying

to get me to hear those words,

the ones that would tell me how to live my life,

all I was getting was static.

While my eyes were trying to focus on those lips of yours,

my ears were just full,

overflowing with the sounds of the chaos that consumed you.

Took over your life.

The chaos.

I watched your lips move in vain,

and desperately tried to read what they were trying to say.

But while your lips were moving in one direction,

your life was moving in another.

And I was distracted by watching your life.

Your life.

I was so caught up in watching your life unfold,

that I forgot to pay attention to my own.

And then it was too late.

Too late.

I watched your lips move as the music blasted in my ears.

And my feet fell along in your footsteps.

You told me how I should live my life,

but I accidentally lived yours instead.