the last time

 May 28th, 2025

"Sometimes it takes a heartbreak to shake us awake, help us see we are worth so much more than we're settling for."

Time moves, but we stood still. Our love. Once fluid, turned into glass.

Conversations felt thin ice every word a careful step. I spoke, silence answered.

For months. Hands held, warmth slipped away.

Little things, once enduring, now etched discomfort into our bones.

Can we rewind the past?

Can we retrace the roads fading beneath fragile glass?

Dreams are echoes and reality wakes us both too soon. 

I still remember the sound of your voice, your feet on the pavement.

Tentative.

Careful.

You weren't sure if you were allowed to want this again.

Us again.

You wore your Burger King black shirt, soft tight clinging just enough to remind me of all the ways you were.

All the times I watched you unbutton your shirt, or when you let me unbutton your shirt.

Slip my hands in and press against your breasts.

You'd always been so sexy, handsome to me, without ever trying.

Your jeans were baggy at the hip sagging down to the corner of your ass, like they actually belonged there. Comfort had a shape, and it was you.

Standing in front of me again, we both had seen sorrow and heartbreak.

I was dealing with betrayal, brutal rejection and replacement.

My hands shook as memories flooded my mind.

I was scared.

You were too.

And god, you were brave.

You told me things you hadn't said out loud before, about why you run, about how you hate yourself, how loving me felt too big for the small, shaking spaces.

Inside your chest, that I deserve to be loved and to be happy.

I didn't say it, my heart ached.

You let me in even while your feet were halfway out the door.

Just slam it in my face. Bam. 

I wanted to reach out and hold you but I didn't trust your hands anymore. 

You didn't ask about my life, like it mattered.

You didn't ask about my dreams.

You never did anymore.

It had been so long since you had really cared. Or showed interest.

And I didn't bother to ask you.

You wouldn't have answered anyway.

No shared secrets, no quiet laughs your gaze lingered a second longer than it needed to...

You looked longer than you should have…

You told me how stressed you were, financially struggling but you came here for me anyway.

You actually chose me to help me.

This time.

This time was too late.

For the both of us. 

There was a heaviness in my chest and I wished we had all day to say goodbye.

Or maybe, we didn't have to say goodbye.

You've been seeing two people at the same time for months now.

What's one more day?

Although, you wanted to be "fair to her."

Well fuck, what about me?

I pushed through the anger, the bitterness, the panic, the doubt AND the pain the pain the pain.

It was all too real.

Maybe you didn't mean to say goodbye, months ago.

Maybe you forgot what I felt like when I held you so tight at night.

Every part of me hoped we could someday start again at the very beginning.

Again.

The beginning.

Soft Unspoken Unbroken.

I remember how you looked at me.

As we stood there face-to-face in the parking lot of a bank.

You looked at me with every feeling you had, you still loved me even though you replaced me and didn't choose me.

I'll never understand why, or how you did it so easily.

Your eyes said everything.

You were wondering what life would feel like if you decided to stay.

You were a person who didn't believe in forever but still tasted the word on your tongue, just for me.

I watched you fidget with your necklace tugging on the chain between your fingers like it might anchor you to this very moment.

Maybe you did.

For a while…your laugh slipping through the air like a melody I hadn't heard in a long time.

I wanted to memorize you, every single eyelash, every single tattoo, every hesitant smile as you told me how much you still care.

I didn't ask you to stay.

I should have.

Love makes a coward out of all of us.

So instead, I just stood there, drinking in the light of you.

Hoping it would be enough to last me forever. I wasn't ready to walk away, for your absence. I didn't want to watch you get into your car and leave.

Because maybe I knew.

There you go disappearing again.

You nearly hugged me again. Brief, unsure but real. I imagine your cheek against mine for just a moment and kissing your lips. It would have felt like that breath of time, we were whole.

I watched you drive away as the tears started streaming down my face.

Not knowing that the next time I'd see your name…

It would be to find out you had finally blocked me.

Cut me off just like that. The last year had never happened, like we hadn't peeled our hearts wide open in front of each other and promised silently, to be gentle. You once were gentle, you were once kind.

Then again, you really had time to deal with losing me. And to you it wasn't losing me because this was your choice. You never wanted me in the first place. You had cut me off the moment you started talking to her, so many months ago. If that is even the truth. I still have no idea where your lies started or if everything was a lie. Maybe you'd been talking to her the whole time we were together. How would I know? Maybe that would explain all of the inconsistencies, never showing up for me, never being your option number one, your odd behavior, the distance, the avoidance…I'll never fucking know. You are the only one that knows, all your lies and I really don't think you care about how much it's broken me to pieces, if you cared you wouldn't have lied to me in the first place kept it a secret from me for as long as you did, continue to play me, use me and just fuck with my mind.

I guess that is the definition of a player right?

I sit in all the memories, the betrayal, the unknown, the questions.

The bench I shared with you in the park never cooled.

Like the coffee cup still holding your warmth.

The wind still carries your laugh through the trees. I replayed the moments your eyes softened when you whispered that you love me so much and you hope I never leave you. And isn't that weird you left me… and I promise I never would I never would leave you and I meant it those nights you stayed.

We were both scared, I stayed too.

But you left.

I believe you gave me honesty without armor.

Vulnerability without shame.

Maybe that was love, not the kind that lasts though, the kind that matters at that time only.

The kind that shows up, shaking, nervous, beautifully human.

Just to say… 

I want to try.

And even now as the days have stretched into months without your voice, as the silence weighs heavier than ever I will forever hold all of the days like a sacred thing. 

I consistently showed up for you.

I trusted you. I let myself be seen. 

One afternoon, if you were mine again, I wouldn't ever let you go.

Not through text messages or through screens, not through doubts but here.

Real. Raw. Present. In person. In blue and denim.

My favorite color dancing across your skin.

Eyes wide open, hands trembling.

A heart that opened just long enough to remind me... why I loved you.

Why I still do.