How To Be Friends After It’s Over
I.
I will call you by your given name. Private nicknames are devious creatures; they make me feel like we have something that just the two of us have. There should be nothing that only the two of us have.
II.
Don’t tell me about your day.
Don’t ask about mine.
III.
Stop calling me on the phone. When we talk, you laugh a lot, and when you laugh I think of you happy and it makes me feel good and I want to make you laugh some more and only you and why does your voice sound like you’re smiling all the time? Make it stop.
IV.
I will provide you with my silence, give you space, because we need air and it’s getting harder to breathe when you’re near.
V.
Don’t tell me you’re tired from a long day, or you’re sad, or you’re confused or when you’re in a similar state. They make me want to give you hugs. Hugs are off limits. Hugs are traps.
VI.
Don’t tell me when you’re happy because I’d want to give you hugs during those moments too. I told you hugs are traps because they make my arms touch your arms and my chest touch your chest and make me smell your skin and make you whisper because you don’t have to be too loud anymore and when you whisper your lips are less than an inch from my…
See? Traps.
VII.
I will stop browsing your profile, and stop looking at my favorite picture of you, the one where I once thought “delicious” to describe your smile. A “delicious” smile? Such a ridiculous adjective for that noun. So ridiculous. But fuck, I want to devour those lips so bad.
See how you make my verbs go haywire?
VIII.
Tell me her name. Tell me you love her. Help me like her. It’s harder to screw somebody over when you like them.
IX.
Remind me every day of her name. Please don’t let me forget. Force me to think of her name whenever I think of yours.
X.
I promise not to miss you. Not during the days I want to talk to you, not during your calls I ignore, not during the texts that go unread, not during those moments when my chest wants to cave in because it keeps telling me what an idiot I’m being for throwing away what could have been such a good thing.
XI.
Don’t cry for something we never really had and shouldn’t have.
Don’t cry.
We have no right to cry.
Fin.
Wish you were braver. 