my letters

in response to what might have been the most intense, twisted, catastrophic rollercoaster of a breakup i've ever experienced, i wrote a series of letters - to myself, to her, to my friends and family who watched me struggle through it, to anyone who was willing to listen, basically. i'm ready to share, finally, so here are those letters. 1: let’s just leave this lying where it is faint breaths of early spring air. a couch soft underneath my touch and a room that’s all too silent in our collective presence. your thigh pressed firmly, comfortably up against mine and our hands locked in an embrace that’s messy, yet somehow imperfectly perfect - and one that is so unmistakably us that it’s almost painful. you say, “should we?” and it’s all the invitation i need to lead the way into unknown territory. my memory becomes a blur up until a dimly lit bathroom appears. although only a few seconds, it feels like forever before a door clicks shut behind us and your hand dances across my jawline slowly. in this moment, you are everything. i inhale, and it’s you, i exhale and it’s still you. your fingertips find my freshly straightened hair and my lips find yours. this is everything to me, it’s the moment that i replay a thousand times in my head on the drive home. it’s the song i fall asleep to and your text that i wake up to. “my gorgeous girl,” you call me, and i fall apart. 2: when what you think of me, is important it rips at my heart at the most unexpected times, when i am reminded of the conversations we have at 3am. the conversations where i throw my voice in a way that leaves me feeling sick - leaves my friends gripping at me just that extra bit tighter when they hold me the next morning. i wake up with blurry eyes and a spinning head, yet my first thought is always still you. 3: i would’ve loved you forever seasons pass, lovers come and go - still it always comes back to you. i envision spending new octobers in the embraces of new people, but november comes around and my mind still lingers on the way you kissed me as if i was all you had ever wanted. but then the train of thought rolls back up to the last station on its journey, and i’m forced to confront the last time you dropped my hand, and the piece of paper out of a school book that defined our fate. the look on your friend's face as she watched my heart shatter like a piece of dropped glass. the looks that my own friends shared between themselves as they were forced to watch me slowly, agonisingly pick myself apart over you. 4: i won’t ask you to wait if you don’t ask me to stay one final look between us. i hope you can read the words that rest on the tip of my tongue, because we both know i’m not going to say them. there’s an indefinable haze cast over the surface of your eyes. i can’t tell if the warmth on my cheeks is a steady blush as a result of the bitter september air, or if it’s my own tears. you can tell, but you’re not going to say it. the silence says enough. if you don’t speak now, then i’m going to walk away, i think i say. you stay quiet, and it says enough. your eyes flicker away from mine, looking anywhere but me, and it says enough. you finally turn, and take the first, and last, steps away from me, and it says enough. i hope you can feel my gaze burning into your back with every step you take. i want to pull on the strings of your heart, use them to guide you back over here like a puppet. before i can, they slip out of my reach. you slip out of my reach.