unsent letter aka i said i’d never miss you, but i guess you never know. may the bridges i have burned light my way back home. (you are my favorite what if / you are my best i’ll never know.)

so i'm spilling oceans, saltwater sorrow in too late tears, prelude and fugue in grief. and i don't regret it, because i know how i felt, i know i needed this to happen, needed something about us to change- but there was no justifying the urge to tear through you in the process. but i could never regret you, or us. not now not ever not one bit - i feel you in my teeth in my fingers still still still almost three years down the line. the etch of your name in my spine. i wonder if you feel the same. i wonder if you feel anything but bitter. righteous. if you dream of apologies you know you'll never get, too. we were girls together, once. best friends, ex-friends to the end. worse off as lovers, maybe. no better off as friends, maybe. is there any other way this could have gone, truly? burn my cursed cruel tongue. burn my anger burn my hurt burn the bridges. raze it to the ground. then the hate dies down and what am i left with? nothing but a hole still stinking of burn and smoke in my chest. and who to speak to it?

i was blind to it. swept up entirely in the tightness in my throat that throbbed “unloved unloved unloved” and i didn’t tell you until the words came out like sinking my teeth into your wrist. and for that i am sorry. for letting hurt fester into resentment and not speaking a word of it to you- that was my greatest mistake, and you, my greatest malady. my greatest love. most trusted confidante, most innocuous of affection, closest companion, the one who knows me truer than most. truer than people who have known me more intimately since. none will ever have the years i spent with you. they’re yours and yours alone to do with as you wish. even if it is to forget them.

any love i showed you is yours to keep. i do not think i showed you enough. contradictorily i gave you the whole of myself, messy, reckless, and young, and that was the ruination of me. and i wanted more from you than you gave me. and i can’t answer the question of how much love you would have showed me if i asked. i wanted to be buried in the same grave as you. more than that, i wanted to live alongside you always. i don’t know what i want now. the whole world in the palm of my hand. to send you a message and get one back. the unearthing of new growth, i dream of it. really, earnestly, i dream. 

you are the core of my heart, still. i think i will always ache in time with the eastern tide. i think a part of me will always be hardwired to run to you. my fingers itch to tell you the whole of the time we’ve lost. i yearn to know the whole of the years of you i’ve lost. as if old wounds don't still weep on both of our skins. old broken promises. i never sent you the bread i promised to bake you and i never did stay forever like i said i would. i meant it, though, when i said it. like how i meant it when i told you i never wanted to speak to you again.

…i still want it to be true. to unbreak a promise. i still want there to be a place for me in your life. maybe just not the place next to you that i dreamed. a little apartment with three cats where there's suncatchers in the windows and a bed for two- but that was only a dream. fairytale. the you and me white picket fence fantasy. i’d take millions of miles of distance and phone calls every few months. i’d stand a few paces back. it would be at least a distance that doesn’t eat at the marrow in the rungs of my ribs every time i think too hard about it.