The moment you looked at me and saw a threat instead of a reason to come back.
The moment you decided you didn’t have anything left in you worth trying for.
I’m not going to war because I want to be brave.
I’m going because I don’t know how to breathe in a world where you’re not coming back.
I thought maybe if I did something brave enough, painful enough, loud enough—you’d hear it across whatever hell you’re in.
You’d feel it.
You’d find your way back to me.
I wanted to be the girl who could survive your silence.
But I’m not.
I’m the girl who holds your toothbrush like a relic, who listens to that voicemail you left two months ago until my battery dies, who whispers your name into the steam of the shower like it’ll wash the guilt off my skin.
I’m the girl who writes letters she’ll never send because she’s too terrified of seeing nothing but indifference staring back.
You’re going to come home broken.
And I won’t be here.
I’ll be somewhere with blood drying on my boots and someone else’s heartbeat slipping out beneath my palms, and all I’ll think about—stupidly, selfishly—is you.
Your hands.
Your voice.
That smirk that made me fall in love with the wrong kind of salvation.
You didn’t say goodbye.
So let me say it for both of us.
Goodbye to pancakes and humming in the kitchen.
Goodbye to that perfect night under the stars.
Goodbye to the way you said my name like it tasted like hope.
Goodbye to the version of me who thought she could be enough to keep you soft.
And goodbye to the version of you who let me go.
Because I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.
If you find this letter?—
it means I didn’t come back either.
Not really.
Not as the girl you kissed under the August sky.
Not as the girl who said yes when you smeared syrup on her lips and called her mine.
