"I sat on the phone with him for practically five minutes before I could think of anything to say. Like a mute, I sat in the falling darkness of my bedroom, alone. Sounds so silent I could recognize the crickets in my backyard, hopping through the unmowed tall grass. How lucky, I thought, they were to be free. “You’re the only one I wanna be with” I told him. Silence. Did you forget about the nights you loved me? I haven’t. I looked out the window at the stars we used to lay under. They betray me now. They’re stained with hopeless memory. Your silence keeps me frozen. I hope you can’t hear the tears on the other end of the phone.

I don’t want to hear about her, I already know. How long must this tragedy go on? I feel myself falling, as if the spools of ribbon that hold me together are being carelessly torn from each other without trouble or worry. Will you think of me ever? Will you remember how it felt in my arms? “What are you thinking about?” a question that could easily be answered in the depths of my blue eyes. The nights nothing needed to be said, a sweeter taste than honey on your breath that told me goodnight. Now everything is needed to be said but my eyes are hollow. Do you know what this feels like? He kept telling me the same thing over and over. It was worse than the silence. Why am I so easy to leave behind? What will become of me when you move on? You twisted me in such a way as to ring out a wet towel, forcing every last feeling in me to drip through and dissolve, leaving me with nothing. I’ll just become a shadow of the past. My stomach churns every time you say her name. What is so great about her? You’ll walk away from this happy. I’ll stay behind in chains weighed down by blame. Do you hold her the same way you once held me? The shade of night in my room grew darker. The noises going on outside no longer distract me for there is no more silence. Your excuses have washed the silence away. I’d treat you like the king you are in my dreams. I’d take you away with me all over again if only for minutes. We could leave this reality behind. I sat there alone, keeping my tears at a hush to impersonate strength. Then the words that erase the once bright stars crept out of his mouth like a monster from the shadows. “I don’t love you.”"