by Ace Gray
The sound of your voice strums chords inside me. The shape and feel of your body make my bones hum. Your eyes are an ice blue that will forever be the ice and snow and clouds that roll in. But your scent…
March 13th, 2018
Dear Broken Promises,
This letter isn’t about you. It’s about him. It’s for the him that yells at me and fights with me. The him that throws my to go container on the counter because it’s not only aggressive but passive aggressive because it’s mine and not his.
This letter is for the man that doesn’t love me—not really—but keeps me anyway. Because love is sticking it out, right? Or is it because he’s selfish. Because I’m weak.
Or maybe he’s weak. That’s why he can’t love me the way you could. And I know you could with your sharp tongue and depthless eyes that I could explore forever.
And if he’s weak that would make me selfish.
Doesn’t loving someone else make me exactly that. Doesn’t pushing that aside save me from that epithet? I could leave. I could be happier.
I could have you.
But I stay. I stay because I said I would. When I took his ring, I said I would endure the good and the bad. I didn’t think it would be all bad. But I promised.
I didn’t know there was you.
But I promised.
So, I’ll suffer his tantrums. I’ll sleep next to him when it’s you behind my eyelids. I’ll suffer the damper it puts on my very soul to know I’m here. I’m here, you’re there. I’ll do it because I promised.
And I hope someday he knows I did it for him. Even though my heart beat for you.
March 15th, 2018
Dear Oblivious,
Twenty-four hours is all it takes to know the spectrum of emotion. From Roy to G to Biv and every single wavelength in between.
We left it as you’d text me. YOU would text ME. Do you know what that would mean to me?
It’s so little and inconsequential but what it says isn’t.
What it says is I’m thinking of you. I want to hear from you. I WANT TO BE WITH YOU. Even if it’s just for a beer.
Do you know how much I want to be that person?
Honestly, I can’t tell if you do. You could be just another oblivious boy. I do EVERYTHING in my power to keep my feelings shoved down. They make me sick, like some sort of infection or intolerance but I’ve lived through both. I won’t live through losing you… At the same time, I could see you being completely aware. Completely aware and utterly kind about it. If that’s the case, why would you still want me around?
I can’t even let myself think about that…
Specially because you don’t text me. You text me BACK, but you don’t text me.
I’m not too proud to say, I’ll take it. I’ll take it even though that one nuclear text still lingers on each word I read. Each word I text. I question EVERYTHING I say. Everything you do. I don’t want to remember it—not all of it anyway—and honestly, you’ve never done anything that would make me doubt you. You are truthful, honest, and upstanding, even if those traits sometime sting, like jellyfish tentacles wrapping around my stomach. You said that our friendship matters, that I matter, and that you want to spend time with me.
But you don’t text me. YOU don’t text ME.
And that makes me feel insane. Because I shouldn’t care. It should all be fine. Any text, any GIF. And there’s that thing where I said I trust you. But I care. I crave your words, your time. I need you next to me. I need those smiles and to watch you tap your hand as if your fingers are separate and attached to your palm all at the same time. (I know it’s something that I can’t quite describe but I can picture your hand on a glass and those traits and mannerisms are things I am in love with because they are yours and no one elses).
Maybe I am insane.
Loving someone like this, with every molecule and zero right to, will do that to a girl.
March 17th, 2018
To the man who won’t catch me,
How do you fall out of love? I’m asking because I need to. I’m asking because I have.
I’m stuck in this place between you and him.
He and I used to be so good. He and I used to have it all. He and I just don’t anymore. And honestly, I can’t say much better for you and I. You and I are shaky, we always have been. You and I have nothing. You and I are broken just as badly.
He was my best friend.
You made me realize I wanted so much more.
But neither of you want me. Neither of you need me. Neither one of you thinks of me outside of the brief moment I make you.
I am invisible.
And it leaves me asking, how do I fall out of love? How did I with him? How can I with you? Because I think I want that now. I think I want to stop feeling the pull toward you, the backflip when I see you, or the hope that rushes through me when I see your name light up my screen.
I want to go back to the way it was, when my life was hard, but it was mine.
For a few months now, it’s been yours. And I suppose I’m grateful for those months. They helped me find me, they reminded me what was important to me, but they made me fall. But these days I’m kind of getting motion sickness. Specially because I don’t think you’ll catch me.
For a time I thought you would. With your funny quips, your Office GIFs, and hugs, but they are few and far between these days. Each time they randomly come in, it’s enough to whet my appetite. It’s enough to make me want to stay. Stay in love with you.
But then there’s the short texts. The no texts. The pages of no GIFs. The fact that you don’t want to grab drinks anymore. Sadness sweeps over me. Sadness and short-comings and this sour, sallow feeling that I can’t shake.
Being in love with you makes me sure that the reasons for that silence are me. All the reasons I’m not good enough.
And I’m kind of sick of it.
I’m definitely sick of the guilt that comes with feeling that way for someone that isn’t him.
He doesn’t see me. He doesn’t hear me. I sit in a room screaming at him, and he plays a Switch. My voice is cracking, and my throat is getting raw. A type of exhaustion that I can’t sleep off weighs on my shoulders and the skin beneath my eyes. I’ve stopped writing.
Except to you.
But I’m kind of tired of those words too. I’m tired of how fucked up they sound. Of how fucked up I sound. I’m tired of the nausea from falling, knowing no one’s gonna catch me.
Most of all, I’m tired of being in love with you.
March 21st, 2018
To the other half of what’s broken,
I know what it’s like to feel like I don’t matter. At all.
And for the first time, to you.
Maybe every other time, I convinced myself the symptom was a sign of some other sickness. Maybe this time, eventually, I will too. But for now, after at least an hour of true and unending tears—the kind that stream down my cheeks and puddle on my chest—I don’t think I will. These are the kind of tears that make my eyes sting and eyelashes clump together and leave me numb. I’m numb because I disintegrated, melted, burned up, and was blown apart all at once. Because every emotion is at my surface, rubbing at my skin and chafing my heart raw.
I broke us.
That is the hard and utterly unyielding truth. I said something stupid and I don’t know if in it, you saw through my charade and flipped the fuck out because of what that meant, or if you really needed to set up boundaries for your sanity, and somehow those boundaries became electric fences. All I know is that we haven’t felt right since then.
We almost did today. There were jokes (or at least jokes-light) and texts (read: unreturned) and drinks (aren’t they supposed to fix everything? Didn’t they almost?). You offered to drive my car if needed (too bad I’ve been repeating “I need you for nothing” over and over and over again) and you wanted to buy me dinner. Any which way you read it, we were so close and yet so far away from that moment of friendship and bliss and
beauty before. So close…
But then you picked up your phone.
Would that mean much if it were anyone else? Probably not. People are attached to phones like they’re a limb we were never meant to have but can’t live without. Like they are the judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to EVERYTHING important. Everyone acts that way except you. You reminded me how phones are a mind suck. Social media is a mind fuck. Your adamancy in it meaning nothing—less than nothing—spoke to the very wounded bit of me trying to heal. You inspired me. You helped me find me. You became the you I fell in love with because you weren’t dependent.
But then today you picked up your phone.
Actions speak louder than words. You can tell me we’re okay. You can tell me we’re still friends. You can tell me you’re going to come visit me in Colorado. You can tell me breathing room puts your mind at ease but I’m starting to wonder. Maybe I just make your gut roil.
Because you—MOTHER FUCKING YOU—picked up your phone.
I was left to sit and wait and eat in silence across the table. I was left to fend for myself against pain and anguish while you texted the entire time. I was left to sit feeling like HE makes me feel. Like nothing. For all your faults, you’ve never made me feel like nothing before. Matter of fact, it’s that you make me feel like something that causes so many GD problems.
But today…
Today I cried for at least a half an hour in the car while I wondered what I really did. How I might be able to fix it. A half an hour where I questioned my worth. Where I wondered who I could even text to help me out of the crevasse I’d fallen into. I didn’t want to end my life, but I wanted a whole new one. One where you and him and they were gone.
One where I was.
Because you picked up your phone. And I know what that means when it’s YOU. I know what it means when you won’t look at me with those icy blue eyes or make deep honey coated conversation. I’m not sure you meant it that way, but it happened. It happened and I’m hurt.
I’m crying.
And worst of all, I think I did it to myself.
March 22nd, 2018
Dear Freefall,
Something brought me to you. As real and as tangible as a rope, pulling me by the heart, by the soul, by the body.
Something equally as real is pushing me away.
You.
The eyes I’ve come to love won’t look at me the same. The lips won’t smile their crooked smile or say those reassuring words. Those long fingers won’t answer my texts.
They accuse, accuse, accuse.
You attack, attack, attack.
You cut the rope.
And now I’m falling. I only hope oblivion catches me.
March 30th, 2018
To the man who might care after all,
“You don’t have to buy my friendship, Mina” so deep, so earnest. There was subtext. Like I couldn’t even if I tried.
But we’ve fallen apart.
We’re broken.
I was desperate, DESPERATE, to fix it. I’m not ashamed to say I’d throw money at it. At ANYTHING that would fix us. Because if it were dollars and cents, I could make some sense of it. I could have some sort of guarantee. And that’s all I realize I’ve ever wanted from you.
Something sure.
I’d been searching for that beer—your beer—when it fell in my lap. I’d been staying away, reminding myself of all the reasons you weren’t mine and never could be. Of all the reasons you hurt me and that was actually okay. But then you came up and cracked the door. You showed me you still care. And what did I do? I rolled over and showed my soft underbelly. Again. Waiting for the shank swipe to my gut.
Only this time, it didn’t come. You showed me you’re my friend. You showed me you appreciate the thought. And when we awkwardly invited each other to drinks, words over words and “I don’t want to intrude” over “I don’t want to force you” it ended in those deep, earnest words.
“You don’t have to buy my friendship, Mina.”
So simple and yet so complex. I felt the truth of it in my bones—to the point that I can breathe and relax and see your face without acid burning in my chest—and it’s been so long. SO long. That hug in the dark hallway… There’s the feeling of us again. US. And I’m addicted to it. Addicted to the possibility.
I picture them, ya know?
And I’ll hear the subtext beneath those words, beneath “you don’t have to buy my friendship, Mina,” and wonder what you meant. Is it because I have it? Have more? Is it because it’s real? We’re real?
Or is it just because you could have ended the sentence with “you never even had it.”
April 5th, 2018
Dear Cruel and Callous,
I love you but… I love you but you’re mean. You’re cruel. You’re selfish. You think that this world revolves around you but that’s just my heart. The world…well the world just keeps spinning.
There are certain inalienable laws that keep the planet suspended. Suspended and spinning. Gravity. Centrifugal force. You are not one of them. Not even for me. There are some things inalienable there too.
I am loyal, and I’m not leaving him. I never was. Not even for you.
Had I left—if I do in the future—it’ll be for me.
And the world will keep spinning. Not him, not you, not even us, can grind it to a halt.
But you succeeded in grinding us to a halt. With words and accusations. Did they make you feel better? Self-righteous? Self-important? I know how badly you’d like to sit on a throne of superiority, how does it feel to sit there alone?
My heart was yours and now it’s not. It’s no one’s, the broken pieces won’t fit in ANYONE’S hands. I am dust to blow away.
You could have let me keep it—my heart, my secrets—you could have realized that you know me, you know what my answer always would have been. You could have ate your accusations for breakfast then still had lunch with me. You didn’t have to lose me.
You didn’t have to abuse me.
You didn’t have to break my heart.
But you did.
And you never once looked back.
Lara Gene Covey is a damn fool. She made it seem so freeing, so necessary, in her little Netflix movie when it came all wrapped up in a cinematic bow. As for me, letters to your flipping soulmate can be filed under some of my more stupid endeavors. I roll my eyes as I shuffle back through the well-worn scraps of paper, each folded over and over and over, then clutched to my heart. My feeble, idiot, breaking heart.
Writing letters did me no good. They got me no man. They gave me no peace. I didn’t find my way out of my feelings after my ink—my heart—bled onto the page.
No one, and I mean absolutely no one, is making out in a hot tub on the ski trip.
I am the damn fool.
Was. I correct myself as I stand on finally sturdy legs and step over to the junk drawer. I pat around an innertube patch kit, birthday candles, and a discarded checkbook from two addresses ago before I land on a lighter.
The metal makes the familiar scratch against my skin, the bite into the soft pad of my thumb. Flame bursts out, heating my gel nail polish as I study the undulation of clear gas and soft orange. I get a little lost in the memories for a moment. In the memories and the heat and the flame.
There’s the burn again. The one that reminded me I was alive when… No. Today is not about him. It’s not about then. It’s not even about those feelings. It’s about moving on.
The lighter flickers out and I shake my thumb, letting my gaze drift from my hand to the table. To the battered, bruised, and bleeding paper scattered there. To the part of me I’m done with.
Finally.
I flick the lighter again, let it scrape against my skin, my heart, my ears. And then I let it burn the letters to ash, one by one.
“You need to dust,” Courtney yells from the kitchen.
“I already did that this month,” I scoff as I call back from my closet, still agonizing ove
r the perfect outfit.
“Well, A, you should dust more than once a month, and B… you missed a spot. And by spot, I mean pile.”
The letters.
Yes, I burnt them. No, I didn’t regret it. But somehow dumping the ashes from the dark green marble bowl on my dining room table had a finality to it. One that I would need wine and Lizzo and some more wine to accept. And I would accept it but…
“I’m cleaning this out.” Courtney’s voice carries over the rush of the sink water.
“No!” I scream as I bolt, barreling down my spiral staircase. The vintage design feature that coaxed me into buying the house is now a hurdle I want to rip out. My bare feet feel each piece of metal filigree. “Court, stop.”
I sprint through my living room, dining room, and up the three stairs to my kitchen only to find Courtney holding the bowl above the sink, far from harms reach.
“Spill,” she says as she sets it down and shuts off the faucet.
I slump down on the long bench of my dining table, unconcerned that I never really got dressed—Courtney has seen me way worse—and blow out a deep breath.
“That’s the letters.” I nod in the direction of the bowl before I let my head fall between my hands. “What?” Her voice ratchets up a notch.
“Yeah.”
“You…” She peers over the edge of the bowl. “You torched them?”
“Yeah.” I stare, unseeing at the woodgrain.
“Whoa.” She sits down across from me.
“Yeah.”
We both sit in the heavy silence for a minute. We’re both used to it, comfortable with the weight of the last few years pinning us down.
