The last look you gave me didn’t ruin anything. Not for the first time, at least. My mother used to joke that I bruised overnight as if I were an apple dropping to a hard floor. I wish I were the muse of anything as momentous as to what inspired Isaac Newton, but no, I am just bruised. Blue and purple on red skin, you push and push at this sight until you meet bone, when your eyes flutter up they are met with something unusually stoic within. Although you never read Aurelius, you notice it, and what is love if not just noticeable change? Never having trusted my judgment, you must now. You lead yourself into this “dead end” like a stray dog, into a dark and halfway lit alley where you’ve no choice. You will always be a ruiner, a disrupter of light, but you didn’t ruin anything that day. Not for the first time.

When I left it was on my own terms, and oh, will it kill you to know– and if it doesn’t, forget I mentioned it: that for the first time in a while, my hindsight is as clear as day? What should seem as foggy as your distaste for light is now rather simple; you weren’t half of what I needed, just an independent variable in this grand experiment of mine that I hope one day to result in “love”. I fear that you are just another inconstant of which I couldn’t quite resolve. Now that you are gone from the scope of my premise, the dependent reverie I live through sits at peace once more. My torso, my limbs, my head.. all in one piece without you.

For example, the day I left I told my boss all about it, mostly to spite you, but also for clarity I didn’t necessarily want nor need. That shift ended with me trying a poke bowl for the first time and when I hated it, I thought solely of tuna on the ride home, not your voice. Afraid of what limerence would replace the sun that evening, I threw on a meaningless headset to play a meaningless game that you would always deem to be “brain rot,” and though you may be right in this, I’ve learned to never give into your pessimism, to never stoop down towards you again. As I listened to these voices of boys overlapping, overgrowing, spilling into a young adulthood of no importance, all whilst holding a frivolous conversation, it arose within me. Something testosterone-esque provoked a feeling of belonging, and it was then, in that state, that I assumed the ability to detach; you do not matter unless I grant you the state of matter, of a tangibility that alters an outcome, I see now, you are not but the changing component. You are not but the changing component!

To you I will pretend to be the mother of our unborn children, I will read Shel Silverstein until you fall asleep, I’ll write to you forever if it means I can avoid speaking to you, and as you worry about your hair falling imperfectly or whether or not you snore, I will worry that you notice how overdone these affections of mine are, that you can tell I’ve performed them before. Maybe you knew the whole time, that I had done many of our moments, but there are two differences you bring, your temper and your unrequite, both of which are more recycled than the words and affections I spit to you.

I can apologize for my unoriginality and that only. All else I will not take full responsibility in manifesting. I’d rather carry with me the guilt of my actions than the weight of the things I never said to you, also likely why I cannot seem to write in third person these days. Perhaps part of me hopes that you read this in a way that you know is unflattering to you, but traced with love regardless. I want you to read this, peering through the blinds at sunrise, half asleep, barely conscious, and I want you, like a metal detector, to pick at the silver lining until it bleeds, to notice the underlying tone only you can receive, that sliver of hope through attention is my love for you.

I do not understand it either.

Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them. I’m sorry that my love is vain, and I’m sorry for you because you blend in so easily. Anyway: story received, story included, I can not deify you any longer.