“I don’t quite know how we’ve ended up here. How we’ve ended up as strangers when we used to spend nights staring at one another across the mattress, pointing and counting up quirks like constellations. I knew you loved me when you asked about the small bump beneath my lip that even I’d never noticed. You traced it with your thumb, something soft in those eyes. “Where did it come from?” you asked, like you’d give anything to see me in childhood just to know me more fully. That’s love, isn’t it? Not the sex or sacrifice or small talk you make after years of memorizing one another. It’s the digging, the prying, the eventual release. The discovery of your own uncharted territories. You saw me more clearly than I saw myself, and somehow you still walked away. Back then I thought you loved me so much that even if it crumbled, broke beyond repair, you’d stay. Touch my forgotten scar and sigh. When you left you said, “You’re all I’ve ever known” as if that was reason enough. It’s become blurry now, the certainty that you loved me once. More fresh are the fights, the never-framed photos. The times I prompted you to call me beautiful, begging for crumbs. I wish I could remember the lilt of your voice as you asked me that question. I stare across the mattress all too often. Alone in the dark, I can almost convince myself that you’re still here. I can almost feel you, fingers frozen on my face, so curious and consumed. Both of us barely breathing in wonder, unaware it would be the moment I’d miss most.”
— a girl who only writes when she’s heartbroken, pen on paper for the first time in three years
