I’m sorry I took a month to respond.
I’m late because I didn’t know what to say.
I say “I know this is still really painful”
but what I’m really trying to say is “I’m sorry.”

And by “I’m sorry” I mean
“I’ll never forgive myself for the pain I caused you.”
Caused us both.
And by "us both" I mean this was hard for me too
because I’m the one who had to make the decision.

And by make the decision I mean I’m the one
who had to take a real, hard look at us, you know?
I’m the one who had to tug the thread
and feel the unraveling in my hands,
and watching the unraveling in your eyes,
and do the unraveling of our life.
I’m the one who had to face what neither of us would.
We hadn’t had *** in months.
We were newly weds.

And I’m sorry we were newly weds.
We should’ve been newly broken up.
And what I mean is that
I shouldn’t have married you in the first place.
I shouldn’t have planned a wedding with you.
I shouldn’t have said yes.

And what I mean is that I felt the burning in my belly
that night you asked me to choose you as my knight,
and to assume the role as your queen.
And by burning in my belly I mean I knew
even then that my “yes” was tentative
and that it felt more like a “maybe”
and that maybe I wouldn’t go through with this at all.
But what do you say, other than an emphatic “yes,"
to the man who has loved you for a decade?

And what I mean to say is that the “yes” wasn’t mine.
It was theirs
and it was yours
and it was ours,
but it wasn’t mine.
What I had was “no.”
Because what do you say, other than an emphatic “no,”
to the man who has tried to love you for a decade?

So my “no” sounded a lot like a “yes” that night
and I’m sorry I got them confused.

And what I mean is that you deserved better.
Not someone better than me; that’s not what I mean.
What I mean is that you deserved courage.
You deserved all of the courage
I let hide behind the moon that night,
and all of the courage
I tucked toward the back of our closet those months,
and all of the courage
I swallowed in favour of a more palatable flavour that year.

And what I mean is that I should have said “no.”
That you deserved “no.”
And all of this is just to say that I ****** up,
and that maybe I was stuck in the Upside Down
where weakness looked like strength,
and absconding looked like leaving boldly,
and “no” looked like “yes,”
and “I do” sounded a whole lot like “forever”
didn’t it?

“To my love, forever”
I said.
Emphasis on the comma before “forever”
because I never could pass up an opportunity to be pretentious.
And what I mean is that
I’m sorry I got your ring engraved with “forever”
when “forever” meant more like a year-ish
and I’m sure as hell positive
that you haven’t felt like “my love,”
have you?

And so I’m sorry I said “forever”
when what I meant to say was “not ever.”
How freeing that would’ve been for us.
And by freeing I mean I could’ve saved us both from this mess.
From this d-i-v-o-r-c-e that we now have tattooed on our hearts.

And so I’m sorry I didn’t say all that I meant to say.
And that it’s too late to say any of it now,
because now we’re strangers,
but what I meant to say that day is that
I love you
and
I want to leave you.