this is not an apology letter and i will not apologize about my words that reek of *****, neither will i express my heartfelt woeful regret for burying what was left of your love under black wilted roses. in September we spent four hours under a tree attempting to bind our hearts and minds but i crumpled them together with the fallen autumn leaves, leaving you staring at the exposed bits of yellow xanthophylls and orange beta-carotene blended with the beautifully bruised muscle. i’m not sorry that your flowers ended in the trashcan with the weeds, but they were crooked and fading. i’m not sorry that the love poem you requested from me was written in the cemetery on the back of your father’s obituary, and i’m definitely not sorry that the first tree i felled in my backyard was the one with our initials carved in your pinned dead heart. call me heartless, but this will clear up everything you were ever baffled about. i am heartless. no, not that type of heartless. i am literally heartless. in my chest there lies a chest of drawers which used to be unlocked and filled with human traits but somehow along the way i think the key to them ended up rusting in my bottomless pit of a stomach. i won’t ask if you still feel that tingle in your spine when my name is mentioned, but did the letters from her burn prettier than the ones from me? did your last name fit her better than it did with me? did the last petal you plucked ended with “she loves me”? i know she smells like honey and roses but i’m not sorry that i smell like roadkill and expired cheese. now it’s December and i’ve changed my name to Hollow then repainted my skin with cut out pieces of eulogies. once upon a time i was actually a teen girl with hummingbird heart beats and red apples for cheeks, but as of today i am completely out of touch with this world, painting nail varnish on cigarettes and tucking in tulips with the weeds. her sad words may be written on textured paper but mine will stand up and punch you in the eye. most of the time we learn that you have choices in life, but all i ever know is that for every big leap you take you’ll end up with a splintered bone and it’s just like writing your life story in permanent ink. maybe one day the ocean will freeze and you’ll find the hidden message in your coffee, but this is not an apology letter and i’m still not sorry for scalding your skin with a hot iron rod when we were twelve years old. see you in the pool of regret; i won’t be there, since i’m lacking a heart.