I Don’t Want You To Go, But I Won’t Ask You To Stay

I’m not going to ask you to stay.

I’m not going to show up at the airport like heart-wrecked girls do in the movies, yelling for your name, frantic to tell you everything I never said.

It’s in the sad songs, too, that play on about love that crushes and hearts they miss, change and distance, and all they’d do for one more chance, one more kiss, one more moment. But I won’t admit any of those things, either.
I am devastated.

But you will never know that. Because I will never tell you. I say I’m proud of you, excited for all you’ll see. That is not a lie. I am. I just wish, a little bit, or really a lot, that it hadn’t ended like this, at all.
And all I can do is watch you go. All I can do is swallow the break in my soul, take it like resilient girls do, and pretend that my world isn’t sinking.

I could write a letter to you, maybe? It was always easier that way, hiding in my script, not letting the ocean of your eyes choke me. I could tell you to read it after you’ve gone and I’m not there. It would be like surrendering. And as you take it and it’s yours, maybe then I can be free again.

But I have no words for you. I’ve exhausted them. And no matter what I say or do not say, I will never be free from you.

But don’t worry at all about that. I will not turn this around on you. I won’t invade you, or make a mess of this. I will not try to change your mind or make you feel guilty. I’ve just gotten really great at standing still.
But you have to fight for what you want, everyone says to me. But so much time has gone by. I don’t really know what to do anymore. I’ve just gotten really great at pretending like I do, these days.

I still dread the day you go, though, with everything I am, I dread it. But like “friends” do, I will wish for you all the greatest things. That is not a lie. I do wish them. I just wish it was me, somewhere in there, a cause in your life, a reason to stay.

But that’s just life and how it goes. You’ll go and this chapter will finish and we’ll just become words to each other, of what was and what will never be. And please, don’t worry about saying anything. You really don’t have to. Promise me you won’t.

I’d rather have our last words be the silence of that night that we’re not supposed to talk about. The night I shouldn’t have stayed. The night I undressed in your dark, trying to be polite, hidden in the shadows. The night I turned around anyway and caught you looking at me like no one has ever looked at me—even you, back then.

I will never get over that. Ever. If I was haunted before, I am haunted now. And I wish so badly you could know.

Maybe I’ll never understand it. Or maybe I do already. Either way, I just wish it was enough. Do you know what I mean?

But I will never ask. I will never know.