The Remaining Dialogues

 12.8.20

1:35 am 

“I’m in her spot, aren’t I? 

She was just here, making her own little indent.

You’ve got everyone in your bed.”

...

“It wasn’t like that.”

Lies, but they’re not harming the truth.

“Do you want me to leave?”

A single sharp breath

A couple resounding heartbeats

Silence

“No.” 

And I honestly thought we were getting somewhere. 

3:23 am

“Am I a bad person?”

Silence

“No.

I don’t think you are.”

I think you’re one of the best people I know.

“...You know, with her.

And this.”

Soft breathing

...

“No. 

I think you’re a little dumb

And don’t know what you want”

you 

“Or maybe you do, I don’t know.

But I don’t think you’re a bad person.”

 

“A calm, steady relationship.” Her

“Sounds sweet

You don’t want someone crazy?

Lively?”

“Crazy? No. Lively, yes.”

If anything, I’m the bad person. 

What happened next meant nothing to you but 

Everything to me. 

The kiss on my cheek was nothing, the touch was everything.

11.30.20

14:13 pm

“You kept the pictures?”

Yeah I kept them

“But why??”

“I didn’t keep anything of you. I thought I was supposed to be nothing to you now.”

Yes darling, 

You see, 

I didn’t keep them to remember you.

“I’m confused.”
I didn’t keep them just so I can look back in 37 years and think about how your eyes would shine so brightly in the winter

About how crazy in love I was

About how my head fit against your collarbone so perfectly, almost as if God carved it precisely for that reason

So I could think about the first love that changed the game

I kept them to remember me.

I kept them to remember who I was, and how I’ve changed since then.

I kept them so I could see how my smile has changed as the waves of life kept washing it away

To watch how I’ve grown from the sad little girl that let everyone walk all over her

From the girl who was so insecure she wouldn’t even look at her own shadow lest it screamed ‘you’re still not enough for the world’

Because by keeping the pictures and memoirs of you

I see now that I was the only thing that was enough to fill the role that was written for me

I never needed you to be me. 

4.13.18

7:01 pm

I wonder what it felt like

To have so many other

Girls'

Fingerprints pressed into your 

Own before me. 

Did they give you the shock 

You give me?

Or better yet, 

Did any of them feel better than

Mine?

7.1.18  

2:03 am

When you close the door

And walk away, 

I can only hope

You don’t hear the sobs through the screen door.

9.22.19  

10:57 pm

“Some types of love have an expiration date.”

It’s my fault I couldn’t read them.

12.6.19   

1:29 am

Ringing

Beep

Voicemail

Action

“Today, I did some thinking. 

I thought about you, about us, a lot.

I thought about where it went wrong.

About what we did right. 

I thought about how it ended, and why it had to end like that.

Why we couldn’t have been anything better.