Writers Jam

a letter to the one who got away. the one who always gets away.

hey, i’m listening to gracie abrams as i write you this.
i know i recommended you some of her songs and i know you’re never gonna listen to them,
just like i know i’m never gonna watch la la land;
just like i know i’m never gonna speak to you again.

the past five years of my life have been annotated by the number of times you’ve left me.
the number of times you could not stay.
people spend lifetimes wishing for the kind of connection we shared and,
i fear there’s only so many times we can get lucky.

i don’t think you realise that, sometimes, your absence is so loud,
i can barely hear myself.
i never have to look for you, i see you everywhere.
in your initials on the back of a car,
in your fondness for cricket in my instagram feed,
in the love i have for myself because you introduced me to it.
you gave me yourself when i thought i could have nothing.

we become dangerous when we lose something that we were most scared of losing,
because the best is behind us and the worst is now.
but i’ve only become smaller.
i’ve shrunk myself enough so that you know you have the space to say no and never come back.

why do you always only like my stories and never my posts?
so that i don’t forget you are always an inch closer to leaving than staying?

i guess you want us to be associates at best,
always at an arms’ length away,
not close enough where i can read your eyes
but not so far that you can’t convince me to stay.

but i cannot ask you to stay, even if i beg to god about it.

you were always gonna be five steps ahead on the ladder
and i was always gonna be in a wheelchair, looking up,
hoping that you’d come down for me.
i can’t blame you though,
for you have always been scared of heights.

and this is how you know you’re always gonna have someone you can run back to.

we were never enemies, you and i,
but we did more damage than any enemy ever could.
i hope you won’t resent me for the illness i had become,
i really tried to save you, i did.

“If you’re the sickness, I suppose you can’t also be the cure.”

“the love was there. it didn’t change anything. it didn’t save anyone.
there were just too many forces against it.
but it still matters that the love was there.”

is this a letter or a plea?