Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back

by Alicia Cook

You tell me I have “nothing to be sad about.” I agree and you meet me with a shrug; and I knew you didn’t get

She didn’t engage in conversation but greeted everyone with a smile. She went home without an appetite but still cooked dinner. She had sex but didn’t finish.

We may sleep together, but my dreams are my own. That’s always been my problem. I shut people out. I only let them see me from certain angles, in certain lighting, at certain moments. My mother says it’s because I am independent. My therapist says it’s my defense mechanism. My ex says it’s why we broke up. My friends say they love me anyway. I say it’s because I feel safest in half measures. I’ll love you—but not completely. I’ll hold your hand—but won’t interlace our fingers. I’ll take pictures—but won’t tag you. I’ll miss you—but never enough to ever question leaving.

And if you knew what my mind was like before, you’d get what I meant that gray morning, when I said you were the only one who could make me forget it was pouring.

You’re too priceless to remain lifeless in cheap pine. In a dress you didn’t choose. In caked-on makeup. You never slept well on your back.

You were told I’ve always been like this—scar tissue and armor. All because someone else dripped their poison onto me, and my lonesome wounds were looking for company before they healed. Heartache is just another contagious disease.

You are not good for my health. I am getting mad at myself. For still wanting to answer, for still wanting an answer.

There’s nothing left to say, though 1,000 words remain. You were too selfish to be patient, and I was too sad to stay. We both know this was never okay.

The first year, I cried every night. Year two, I stopped romanticizing the bruise. By year three I was free, and that’s when my phone rang. It was like you knew that I was finally okay.

We were too busy chasing survival that we didn’t even consider that the acts of surviving and restoring would hurt too.

We were too busy obsessing over how something we wouldn’t ask for in one million years could show up unannounced and dictate our lives in a such a way, that our memories became distorted, or amplified, or went missing altogether.

It’s as though you’re not just the love of my life, but the love of all my lifetimes. Like we’ve been here before, like we’ll be here again. And again. And again. Looping in a way that doesn’t make me dizzy.

Sometimes I feel like I only feel anything when something is going wrong;

where there exist people who can reintroduce me to myself. I trust that those I trust with my life can help bring me back to life.

When you said you loved me in red, I wish you had said that you loved me instead. We’ve confused passion and pain, turned each other into liars. We have become colliding trains; no survivors, no survivors.

There are layers to loving me and most of them aren’t pretty. My reflection doesn’t compute. I don’t look like a girl who has nothing to lose but I feel like one—I’ve come undone.

How lucky I am to have stayed long enough to play with the hair at the nape of your neck. To learn the reasons behind your nail biting and the scar between your eyebrows. To feel you twitch and to have our bare feet touch in our sleep. To eat shrimp tacos with you in front of the television. I would have missed out on so much. I would have missed out on the person I became since knowing you.

Odds are, you nudged shoulders on a busy street with a broken human today, and you didn’t even know it. Practice empathy. Practice kindness. Always.

You’re not good today. The weather is affecting your mood and you are crying too easily at commercials, so you put on something you’ve seen a trillion times.

Sometimes time doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain, and water doesn’t regrow the gardens. Sometimes time, try as it might, can’t keep its word and doesn’t heal you from what occurred. When they ask me how long you’ve been dead, you die in my head all over again.

It never occurred to me that I could stay warm in my skin after what we weathered.

You were in photos, in text messages, in strangers, in song lyrics, in certain smells, in clothes of mine I knew you loved.

By the time the first snow of another year began to fall without you, and my street quietly transformed into something else as I slept, I was okay. I had become someone different inside of my familiar skin, and I was okay. This is still a love poem even if I don’t love you anymore.

It happens suddenly. I could be fine for days, weeks, months. Until I am not.

How do I silence my mind like I silence my phone?

I came here to be honest, not the strongest.

I’m in my own head a lot.

I am a hard person to love.

Sparks did not fly when you met me, those were warning flares, d i s t r e s s signals.

They kissed goodbye instead of see you tomorrow. To this day, they wonder if the other detected the subtle differences. Like how they held one another a bit longer, a bit tighter. How they walked away slowly, turning around to ensure that the other’s smiling face was burned into their memory. They wonder if the other noticed how the “I love you” that left their lips was their most honest declaration, said slowly and deliberately, because they knew they could never say it again.

They wonder if the other knows that not everyone who has to leave, wants to leave.

In need of a friend; lonely living in a world addicted to pharmaceuticals.

You never loved me, but your heart broke just the same the day I stopped loving you and began to love myself.

My overthinking is only romantic when it is described as a wanderlust mind that spans galaxies; not when I call it what it is, obsessive and intrusive.

I am drained from breathing here, in a world with last words and final hugs, where we have to worry about clocks running out and saying goodbye to people we know we can’t live without but will have to one day. It is hard to live in this world of inevitabilities.

The way your breath touches my ear— we are alone, everywhere. You don’t know what you do for me— or to me— the lightning you course through me. My feet have found solid ground. Skies have parted—no dark clouds. You managed to slow me down just enough to pause, to breathe, to turn my life around. And I hope you are still here this time next year.

I just want to sit, count your eyelashes.

If you don’t, then I won’t disappear. And we’ll still be here this time next year.

I’m not trying to be dramatic, but these are the facts: breakdowns are stealthy. I just want to be healthy and happy with where I’m at.

Our last hug, you lifted me off the ground like you wanted to take me with you, like you didn’t want to let me go, but you left me there. And yet, when you placed me back on my feet, my knees didn’t buckle. I remained standing. That’s how I knew that plot twists don’t always have to feel like the turning of a knife. They can feel like the bridge in your favorite song. They can feel like daylight on your face. They can feel like a second chance at a better life.

Life is a mix of choices and chance. A cross between best of luck and best-laid plans.

Sometimes it feels like the cards I’ve been dealt were shuffled by the Devil himself. I can read his tell.

Adam never needed to learn; he had Eve ...

Where was the line when I could no longer conjure the sound of your voice? Where was the line the first time I heard your laugh come out of someone else’s throat?

I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, I need to find myself. Survived all Four Seasons of your exit with no reasons.

Maybe I should distance myself from you; but before I do, come closer, I want you more than closure.

We will meet again one day, and you will be the best, healthiest version of yourself and I will be the best version of myself and we will catch up over coffee and buffalo fries and it will feel as though no time has passed at all. That helps me sleep at night.

You gave me the best gift. You left. You left and you didn’t come back no matter how much I cried. No matter how much you cried. No matter how many times you got in your car only to run around before arriving to our past. No matter how many times the wrong headlights in my driveway made my stomach sink. No matter how many times I screamed that you were killing me. No matter how much hearing that killed you. No matter how many times I warned you we were making a mistake. No matter how many times you thought so too. No matter how many unsaid words floated between us in email drafts and half-dialed phone numbers. You gave me the best gift. You broke my heart. You left. And you stayed gone. I want to thank you for that.