I can’t decide which part is worse.*

4 am, lying restlessly awake, feeling like I’m in some sort of heart free-fall, every fiber of me reaching for you and the mirage of what I want us to be.

Or

Sitting across from you in a room with friends, my stomach in knots, trying to keep my smile as smooth and cool as yours seems, working so hard to pry my mind off of memories of you and I.

Or

When we’re finally alone and the strained conversation is swallowing me like a black hole inside my chest, ******* from the inside out, the gulf of sentiments we won’t venture painfully widening the creeping chasm between us.

Or

Those songs on the radio that remind me of you, telling of what we have been, what we could be, their rhythms stirring up the strangest ripples of longing and regret and panic and isolation.

Or

The quiet moment when I catch your eye and try to read between the lines of your words and gestures, searching your receding depths for hidden traces of this same torture, wondering with mixed hope and fear if that longing still burns deep in you.

I can’t decide which is worse.

To endure it and hope it gets better.

**Or to leave and know it never will.