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this is getting difficult to romanticize.

  • Writer: Kendall Flies
    Kendall Flies
  • Feb 9
  • 6 min read

I woke up with puffy eyes. 

I exhausted myself with words, and overthinking, and the mental gymnastics it takes to assign meaning to you. 


Because my body refused sleep.

For fear I would dream about you.

For fear of your pretty words and your empty futures.


For fear of my own delusions,

of my hollow hopefulness that you closed your eyes just as begrudgingly.

My naivete that I may exist somewhere within your subconscious. 


Did you even save a corner for me?

Is there a light that reaches me anywhere?


I woke up with shaky hands, and this time it wasn’t because of the wine.

I woke up dead.


I held myself under scalding hot water.

I scrubbed my skin until it was red and raw.

I tried my best to clean myself of you.

I wrote about you until my hand cramped and the ink ran out.


How did you wake up?

How do I make this poetic?


I choked on my own tears.

I listened to you breathe on the other end of the line.

I heard you think about the right things to say.

“It’s not you it’s me”

“I’ve had so much fun with you, and you’re so great, but I’m just not emotionally available right now. You’re so great, you're so fun, but I can’t be the partner you deserve right now.” 

“I told you that. You said you understood that.”


As my throat dried up, and snot filled my nose, and my chest tightened, and I thought about when you kissed me on the forehead an hour ago

I clung to one word in particular: “fun”


Must I always be reduced to that?

Am I fated to an existence of being a good time?


Tell me, how do you remove yourself?



I remember every word you’ve ever said to me.

I remember every word you’ve ever said to me, because I have to.


Because I’ve given you all of me, and, in return, I’ve been given crumbs.


I’ve been starving for months

Living off of your crumbs.


You fed me in the beginning.

I feasted on you, and you let me.

You let me.


I was hesitant to, but you gave me every sign.

You held out your palm and told me everything would be okay


But, the taste of you wasn’t the thing making me full.

What really fed me was how much you enjoyed the taste of me.


You told me you loved me in your sleep once and I was full for a whole month.

You told me you couldn’t pull away when you kissed me, and every time I touched my lips I closed my eyes for you.


You told me the worst thing that's ever happened to you

You shivered in my arms and I kissed your eyes

I held your jaw until it stilled from shaking

You told me what kind of flower I would be

I was an Orchid for you.

You read to me until I fell asleep

You kissed me in public

We talked in that restaurant, that restaurant you coined “ours”

We talked in that restaurant until the lights came on, and the chairs were stacked, and the staff was giving us dirty looks

You told me my scent was all over your apartment

and you liked it

You told me you hadn’t met anyone like me

You told me we had time

You promised

You promised me

You promised.


The only reason I’m still alive is because I had tasted all of those steak dinners

I savored every desperate morsel.


Then you gave me less

And less

And less

Until my stomach shrank


Until I shrank for you

I shrank for you and I called it patience.


Then I made a crumb a meal and I made myself full on hypotheticals, and dreams, and seeing you once a week 

Then I made myself full on hypotheticals, and dreams, and seeing you twice a month

Then I made myself full on hypotheticals, and dreams, and seeing you once a month

Then you told me you weren’t quite ready and by then I had no appetite left so I lived off of hypotheticals, and dreams, and hope.


Hope is a fickle, silly thing

But still, it does provide sustenance.


I hoped.

I had to do it.

I was so fucking hungry.


You told me it was just bad timing, so I waited.

Like a dog who only knows to eat when it hears a bell ring

I waited for you.


I waited so long waiting became patience, and I learned to feed myself on patience too.

Then I ran out of patience, and I learned to feed myself on pride.


Pride is bottomless

Pride makes you hate yourself.


You told me you couldn’t be with me because you hate yourself.

Is this what it tastes like, baby?

Now that you’ve made me you, can we sit at the fucking table and share a meal?

You did tell me you’d cook for me.

Are we eating pride tonight?


Suffering is contagious.

You know that.

You told me that’s why you left.

You’re so selfless

Aren’t you?


No,

You still wanted to keep me.


But someone taught you the word “boundaries”


So, you kept me at the appropriate distance

Just an arm’s length at first - then a drive’s - then a phone call’s

As to not infect me with your contagious suffering, of course


Because you are so selfless, of course.

Is it selfless to hate yourself and be aware of it, or is it just narcissism? 

Is it selflessness or cowardice that waves the white flag?


Well, I’m a selfish person.

My self is interested in the version of you that gives a fuck,

so I choose the former.


You are selfless.

Now you and I both are convinced of this.


Now you’re a martyr.

Now your feet are forever glued to your pedestal.

Now they’ll write stories about your heroism.

Are you the bigger person if proclaiming so makes a girl cry for 2 hours in a parked car?


Regardless, I can fix you,

Right?

That’s why you’re telling me all of this, right?

To fix you?

Or are you getting off on the idea of being broken altogether?

Or am I getting off on the idea of you being broken altogether?


How did you convince me someone can ever be whole?

How did you convince me the impossibility of being whole is a baseline requirement for asking me to be your girlfriend?


How did you convince me that I’m whole?

I’m not.

Nobody is.

Wholeness is a pipe dream.

It doesn’t even exist in children’s books.


Why did you keep me? 

Why did you keep me?

I asked you why and you didn’t have an answer.


I was starving, and everyone told me how thin I looked, and I was so tired, and I was so cold

I was perpetually shivering 


Did you notice?

Did you notice I was shivering?

When you fell asleep on the phone with me did the sound of my teeth rattling soothe you?

I know you sleep better when the room is cold


Then I set myself on fire.

Partly because I hadn’t felt warm in half a year

Partly because I wanted you to leave me

Mainly because you gave me a match and told me not to 


Then you reminded me you were holding all of the matches 

And you convinced me that wasn’t what they were for

That you would have never lit one 

That I was an awful person to commit that act


Why did you have so many matches?

Do you get off on that kind of restraint?

Is that why you’ve kept me for so long?

Did you only want me for the sick act of having without using?


I set myself on fire

Don’t you like the way I love you, babe?


Then I was ash and I didn’t even fantasize about eating because I no longer required food

Then I remembered you were emotionally unavailable because your ex had burnt you

Then I remembered how you gave me a match

Then I remembered how you reminded me you were holding all of the matches

Then I remembered I wasn’t a metaphor, I was a person.

Then I asked you if I was your person, and you told me “no”


Then I believed you.

Then I left you.


It’s not poetic at all, is it?

Any meaning I assign to you is void.

Merely a projection of what I would have felt.


It was never poetic.

All of those tears.


Those tears were never profound.

Those tears were never meaningful.

They weren’t even blue.

They weren’t even salt.

They were just wet.



 
 
 

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