🕊

“I wonder if this is growing up. Waiting until I’m home again to press my cheek to the bathroom floor and cry. For the first time in a long time I don’t shove or shout. Don’t try to leave a mark. But I hope I do. I hope there are nights when he can’t sleep and he doesn’t know why. That there are songs that he finds himself listening to on repeat at 4 am when everyone else is asleep and he’s smoking a cigarette until he feels the burn of it at the filter. That’s where I am. Not in any photographs. Not in a shoe box of things he can’t bear to throw out. Things other couple’s have–cinema tickets and seashells. I am a name it hurts to hear. A bruise that will never heal. And I know this is growing up; being kind enough not to remind him.”