You push thoughts of him into dark corners of your mind and then push yourself into dark corners of empty rooms to think about him.

The two of you were always a muddied ‘what if’, a welcome shoved away in disdain, red stains on a tiled bathroom floor.

You spit words like paper cuts knowing you’re both out of band-aids. Insults flung like rocks on a playground; it becomes a contest to see who’s more damaged when the dust has cleared.

Tell him you don’t mean it. Tell him it’s self-defense. Tell him that you bite hard because you’re falling apart inside, a melting mess, a fractured fighter left unfixed, and you need someone to feel more pain than yourself. Tell him you made bad decisions. Tell him you’re sorry.

He’s sorry. He picked up the rocks you threw and threw them right back. He put salt in your paper cuts. He was lost, and he followed the twisted path you dragged behind you.

He says he sees you as broken art. He says he sees you as a shivering masterpiece, shattered by sharp expectations and sharper tongues. He says he sees where you’ve been ruined. He says he sees your scars. He says he’s sorry. He doesn’t say this to you.

You want to make it better. You know that it’s all a misconception, a malfunction caused by miscommunication. You messed up. You’re sorry. You want him to know.