have you ever felt a relationship die,
gasping for its last breath
between scattered texts
and awkward conversations?

have you ever paused
to find the words that you want to say
and force them out of your mouth,
or to find the words that
maybe you don’t want to say
but you know that they need to be said?

you wince in pain at each breath you inhale
because you know that the air
you are breathing into your lungs
is from a world where you are alone.
you are hurt and confused
and scared in this world,
and this world is no longer fictional.
this is your reality now.

you thought you had made
the right choice by not speaking,
but now you think that maybe
the silence is louder than
the words would have been.

you go to bed alone.
you struggle to fall asleep,
and sometimes you still wake up
screaming from the trauma
that broke you so long ago.

now, you turn over,
and no one is lying next to you.
no one is comforting you.
no one is holding you.
no one is telling you
that things are going to be ok.
and you can tell yourself
as many times as you want,
but you can’t believe it
when it isn’t said aloud.

you know that
you weren’t perfect, far from it.
you know how many
mistakes you made.
you know that
you are difficult to love.

you knew from the very start
that this wasn’t going to last forever,
yet somehow, you still
planned out your future as if it would.

you’re looking back on the memories,
mapping them out like a final road trip.
you can’t seem to pinpoint the exact
moment when things went wrong.

and you’re not sure if that’s good,
because it would mean that this
wasn’t caused by a single action
or mistake that you made,

or if that’s bad, because
it would mean that
somewhere along the way,
he fell out of love
and you didn’t even notice.

there are situations you
keep imagining in your mind,
ones where everything
magically returns to normal.

or where all of a sudden, you move on,
and love again, and trust again,
and it stops hurting and
it never hurts again.

those aren’t real. they’re not real,
but the pain is. it hurts. badly.
you’re angry, but you
don’t even know who you’re angry at.
you’re not angry at him, despite it all.
maybe you’re angry at the world,
at the injustice and unfairness
that your life has dealt you.

or maybe you’re angry at yourself.
you feel pathetic.
you don’t like to shower alone
because the razors used to call to you,
and now you don’t have anyone
to stand there by the bathroom door.

you don’t like to go to bed alone.
you don’t like to wake up alone.

these irrational fears that
you have absorbed from the years
of your traumatic past are still there.

he’s gone, but you are still afraid.
you’re not any more afraid
than you were before.
it’s the same. but now,
you have no one battling
those fears alongside you.

you feel incapable
and weak and childish,
and you don’t know what to do.

if you’ve ever felt like this,
then you understand.
if you’ve ever felt like this,
I’m sorry.