Our moments now are, at best, comprised of awkwardness and pain. I can hardly spare you a grimace of a smile and you can hardly bring yourself to look at me when we pass each other, so I guess it’s equal and all right. Somehow, it is a fair trade and it balances itself out.
It’s hard to imagine we were once an integral part of each others lives. It’s hard to fathom how easily we become—basically nothing to each other.

Or me to you, anyway.

I had constantly asked myself how did you pretend so easily, how you acted like you didn’t care with hardly a chink in the mask. The act you whipped up for yourself was terrifying in how solidly foolproof it was.

It was a dark day when I realized the truth: you weren’t pretending.

So now I’m sitting with a pile of pictures that I’m debating whether or not to tear up and a tangle of gifted necklaces I’m figuring whether or not to pawn off and a cluster of stuffed animals I’m tempted to give to my dog. You know, the one you would take care of while I was away. He grins a hello, by the way.

Not that you’d care.

I’m not feeling sorry for myself, no, not at all. I’m just staring into my cup of coffee and wondering why it tastes a little salty, realizing right after that my cheeks are wet. I’m only wincing every time you come to my mind. I’m merely getting drunk off of memories and wondering where the new ones will come from, smiling a twisted smile and laughing in a way that sounds a bit like crying but—

not that you’d care.

You let me down easy; I’ll give you that.

Okay, no you didn’t. You dropped me on my head in a way that has me snarling at fate and wondering what I did wrong when, very obviously, I did nothing wrong. You let me fall when you promised you wouldn’t. You let me down. You broke me and you’re skirting around as if I did everything to you.

What lies do you feed people for them to look at me as if I did all this?

Granted, I’m over you.
Mostly over you.
A little over you.

Alright, I’m not sure what-I-am-over-you. One day, someone can say your name and I can blink and look and smile and say, “Who?”

And then it starts to rain. And let me tell you that when it rains, it fucking pours.
Suddenly the mere brush of your presence on the outskirts of my mind has me feeling like I got sucker-punched, like I’m suffocating because now I can’t tell left from right or up from down. I’d like to say you’re dead to me and grin but oh heart-of-heart knows that’s very well not true because it knows that when I look at you I wonder ‘what if’ and when I look at her I wonder ‘why’ and when I look at us I can only bite my lip and shake my head.

I know I can’t go back, but I’m still going to some days. It makes me feel better that it’s a three steps forward, one back scenario instead of one forward, two back.

I guess—I figure it’ll happen one day, me getting completely over you.
One day it’ll happen.
I guess.