Writers Jam

I wish I hadn’t let your pink blossom face into my fray in a moment of foolish hopeful weakness again. I wish I didn’t hurt when I unearthed your name and messages with the nuance of a weary archaeologist. I wish I hadn’t cross-referenced the dates on your playlists with your likes with your highlights with your posts with your pain. I wish I didn’t see all the tiny pieces of poetry you left for me in my wake. I wish I didn’t know how much I had hurt you. 

I’ve made so many mistakes when it comes to how it all ended. I should’ve given you my reasonings, my closing kiss goodbyes. Somehow I finally became what I hated the most in you. I unceremoniously shattered what had been built with precious intent. Always pushing away at the first inconvenience. Never a cause or a confrontation. Forever one step ahead in our combined abandonment.

My heart bashes itself against the bars of a self-made jail, rattling my ribs like it’s child's play. At every memory of how it ended, it squeezes and tightens arteries and veins gushing with blood. In your every confession of betrayal and longing, it claws at the muscles of my chest, and rubs salt and vinegar in the wounds. 

I’ve spent months crying at every church we promised to go into. I wrote poems, letters, thinkpieces, critiques, and eulogies that I never sent around to you. I mourned you in every yellow flower that bloomed out of the cracks of concrete. I hid you away in sketches in the last pages of my diary. I hoarded and held onto souvenirs that I’d never be able to give you.  

Any house can be a haunted house if you put enough memories in it. For my last act of love, I’ll leave you in peace. I’ll dismantle this tower of love I isolated myself in, brick by brick. I’ll tear away at the posters of our confessions and I’ll throw out the scoreboards of our fights. I’ll disassemble the fixtures and fittings and I’ll throw the door bell into the abyss. I’ll burn down the brambles beside our boundaries and I’ll tear down our tattered tapestries. I’ll leave behind our hallowed ground and leave nothing but a shadow on the grass. I’ll clean up after myself and tell the trees to stop whispering my name when the wind blows through. 

I’ll leave you behind and think of you in the unending crescent moons of my childhood. I’ll hear your reassuring laughter in the gentle waves that lap at my feet. I’ll gaze upon your dimpled smile in sweet Orion’s belt fixed upon my dim sky. I’ll whisper my undelivered apologies into the sun-dappled ripples of water that we once called ours.