#prettydumb

It’s been seven months, one week, and six days since we parted. I haven’t been counting but I found a calculator online that could tell me exactly how many seconds have passed between us since we last shared a bed. 19,531,407 seconds, but its not accurate because I don’t know what time you got up in the morning to leave me.

I woke up alone in the hotel room, conveniently prepped to be anonymous, already stripped of your presence. No sign of sorrow, no comforting note, just empty wine bottles, and Erica’s no bake cookies from the night before. I’ll never forget my 25th birthday. I’ll never forgive myself for sleeping.

This is your last poem. Longing for you has it’s limits, and I’ve run out of dreams. Romantic sentiment turned to dark obsession. You are not mine, Emmanuel, but I can keep the memory. Mornings you once said were sacred. Making love in the grass. Your allergic reactions. There is beauty in the process, but not so with love. Only the endpoints matter.

In the beginning, we were crazy in love. We have two endings. One, when you stopped loving me, though I daresay once you loved me more than, and the other, when I stopped being crazy. Hard to say when I mistook passion and pain for something that can only exist between two people.

All the days I cried over photos, music, and letters. Spending a week indoors in summer staring at the mug you gave me, hating that I still have it, but it is not us. All the ways I blamed, tortured, and deceived myself. Convinced I was too ugly for you, starving and swollen, wishing for a baby’s face, but my broken skin is not us.

My broken heart is not us, either. Emmanuel, my love letter must have distressed you. I am not sorry. No love, no letter. Now, no, we will never call each other to see how things are. We will not remember together with secret hearts because we are strangers. I am not strong enough, and you don’t want to know me.

Strange how many strangers I know. The more people I meet the more estranged I become. Better not invite me to any party. At least 3 people will feel uncomfortable. Including you. Only wanting to be real, only ever slapped me in the face. Like a love that’s hard to find.

Our love will not be found, again. I am the last mistress in the back of your head. You are the first thought in mine. After a dog, a man, a woman, a piano, and a book. A whole life of things that are not you, and a song I’ll pretend is meant for someone new, too.