Ten (Breaking Up) Texts I Should Have Sent You But Didn’t

1.

How do I say this poetically: you fucking destroyed me.

2.

The number of calls from you on my phone is zero. The number of calls from me to you is one. When you hear the voicemail, I hope you don’t hear the desperation in the way I wish you all the luck in the world and tell you how pleased I am for you. I hope you don’t hear the way my lungs breathe ‘iloveyouineedyoupleasedontgo’ every time I draw in a breath.

3.

I am so determined to be the girl who lets you go so that you can come back, I forget to accommodate for the fact that sometimes wild things do not return, not even for their young and you and I have no such bond or hold on each other.

4.

I only learned that I was a cage when I realised I was in love with someone who was in love with someone else and would rather lie than tell me.

5.

I have also learned that three days of alcohol induced slumber is still not enough to get rid of every sugar spun dream I have of you. It is still a shock when I reach for you in the mornings and you are not there.

6.

There are a thousand poems in the way you left a girl with so much hope that she no longer knows how to breathe promise without it ringing with your name.

7.

I am still tasting forevers in the way your eyes meet mine, even though your lips are using words like “space” and “travel” and “promise. And I am nodding because I understand, when I was a little girl, I set free a cage of captured birds in my Aunt’s home, because there is something in the way birds fly after captivity that makes them seem almost holy.

8.

It was the way your lip curled on the word “promise” that makes me uncomfortable. There are only three other people in my life that have ever used that word, and they are all strangers now.

9.

I am learning to accept that caged birds never return to say thank you when they are set free, and not everything that flies after captivity deserves to be called holy.