the bridge

did it hurt?

walking away from what you were too afraid to have, calling it growth, calling the next person healthier, calling yourself someone who is finally loved correctly—

only to stay awake until three a.m. with the ghosts of all your lovers past?

like a song with half a climax, the beats and tempo keep on building and pounding and churning, and just at release, drop down to the belly of the earth. blue-balled. killjoy. it's not even about the person. it's the songs. the drums. the synthetic ums and as. modern music somehow learned to sound-ify missed destiny and hide it in the bridge of a stupidly catchy pop song. the lyrics are half truth, half random words. the singers are talented, to a degree. the album is fifteen versions of the same track. every listener has a story with the exact same plot, each pretend their wound is one in a universe. if i were able to play an instrument, i probably would have written twenty albums to all the boys i’ve loved before instead of writing deeply vulnerable fiction that acts as a transparent veil over my unprocessed breakup grief. and the bridge is always my favorite part. all the buildup, all the tone-setting, all the premise, ready to land. one foot at the door, one foot hesitating. it has the same architecture as a hesitant hand: brushed fingers, half-closed doors, a head turning after farewell, half a wave hanging in july breeze.

i used to write only in poems. it was easier with unfinished memories and emotional objects like these. a supercut to all my wasted love. i spent a good part of my younger years convincing myself that it was all in my head. that i had many normal and easily forgettable relationships with others because i am both a hopeless romantic and a february pisces.

but i can never write a full story, one with a clean beginning, reasonable plot and a thought out ending. it's always remnants of my early years tangled and blurred into the fictional version of what i thought had happened. a corner of his eyes. the lower dimple at his cheeks. red knuckles against cold glass. the back of their bikes. broad shoulders in white shirts. slender hands. empty promises. sad smiles. unsaid apologies. defeated gaze. hidden affection. all my stories are fragments of imagery. short sentences. noun phrases. verb phrases, sometimes. never a full clause. grammatically dramatic. then suddenly, a very long sentence wearing the coat of a pretend scholar to hide its deeply immature and naive reasoning. teenage bones, old-man skin.

i do remember the good parts. i remember all of it. but the sad parts stained my hippocampus grey. over and over, i re-smeared everything by replaying it, permanently altering the way i view heartbreak and lost touch. a coping mechanism, perhaps: weaving meaning and importance and depth into horseshit breakups with even shittier people, just to justify my own stupidity and suffering.

because if separation doesn't serve a purpose in my emotional growth, why the fuck did we have to end?