There was a boy I met early this year who blames me for breaking his heart. He called me a few days ago. Coffee, he said. Just to catch up, he said. I would have said yes, except I remembered the way his voice broke the last time we talked, and I thought I might injure his heart again without my knowing, so I said no.
I must be getting old. I was never this cautious with people when I was younger.
You said you understood and piled on the smiles like little jewels, little treasures. You promised your world would never find anchor in the cleft of my waist or the sunset tinges of my smile. But you broke at the first lashing.
A simple strain. Nothing to be scared of. Yet you ran and thrashed as if you had been led to slaughter, as if all the laughter in the crevices of your pillow were pins designed to make you bleed.
I was never built for war or the volatile grenades released by the coupling of almost-love and almost-hate. I never could thrive in the tempest of vertiginous need.
So for your sake, for my peace and quiet, for tomorrows that won't find cause to vacillate between a humdrum smile and perplexed regret, I gather up myself. Even those tiny crumbs I somehow let fall, and sweep the barest traces of my footsteps quickly, quietly, into the ether. As if I had never been there at all.
Originally published on Tumblr, March 2010. Reposted December 2010.