to the one who was mine.
I still hate the way you looked at me that night. not because you were afraid.
because you weren't. you stood by the door with your coat already on, telling me that you couldn't do this anymore, and I remember thinking how beautiful you looked when you had finally stopped pretending to love me.
i asked you where you were going. you said, “Away.”
Such a small word. i have hated it ever since.
i wanted to tell you that I could change. I wanted to promise you mornings without arguments, nights without questions, a life where I wouldn't need to know where you were every second of the day. I wanted to become the kind of person you could love without feeling trapped.
but you were already reaching for the door.
and I couldn't let you. i know what that makes me.
don't think I haven't spent every night since then thinking about it. I remember your face. I remember the last thing you said to me. I remember how badly I wanted to hear you say that you loved me one more time.
you didn't. i suppose that should have been enough.
but I have never been very good at letting you go. i kept everything you left behind.
your sweater is still hanging in the wardrobe. your cup is still on the kitchen shelf. I haven't moved anything because somehow moving your things feels more final than losing you did.
sometimes I still talk to you. i tell you about my day. i tell you when it rains.
I tell you that I finally learned how to make the coffee the way you liked it. and sometimes I tell you that I'm sorry.
i don't know if you would forgive me. i don't even know if I want you to.
because the ugliest truth is that, even now, after all this time, there is a part of me that is relieved you cannot leave me again.
you can't fall in love with someone else. you can't wake up one morning and decide that I am no longer enough.
you can't stand at the door with your coat in your hands and say away.
you are mine in the only way I ever knew how to make you stay.
i told everyone you left me. they believed me.
you were always so good at disappearing and I suppose I finally learned from you.
i buried the letter you left behind, i buried the photographs and i buried the truth.
and tomorrow, when they ask me again where you went, I will give them the same answer I have given for years.
you wanted a life without me. and I couldn't bear to give it to you.
for dear : @suemit
