Sat down. Stared at the wall.
Let the silence crawl up my throat and choke me.
Then I whispered into the empty space where he used to live:
“Why wasn’t I enough?”
My body had never taken to the cold, and tonight I stood under the full moon, bare feet curled into the damp grass, wrapped in my tattered cardigan the one he used to chase me around in, laughing, tugging it from my shoulders before kissing every inch of newly exposed skin. That cardigan was love and war stitched together. Now, it clung to my bones like grief.
Tears carved salt lines down my face as memories hit like a flood. Eighteen missed calls, sixteen desperate messages in just twenty-four hours was me clawing for answers. And him? Silence. Ghosting me. I couldn’t breathe. My chest cracked wide with every unanswered call. This heartbreak, it wrapped a ribcage of barbed wire around my lungs.
Eleven years ago, I poured my heart out to him on a park bench in the rain. He held my face and promised, “I’ll hold your hand until you can walk without me.” But I never learned. And he let go.
Flashbacks crash into me; our wedding day, bare feet in the sand, ink on our fingers from writing our own vows in a leather notebook. We danced to Otis Redding, just us and the waves. The way he twirled me under the fairy lights at the reception and whispered, “You’re my forever, Penn.” How we made out behind the venue like horny teenagers.
He made life feel like music. Like whiskey on the tongue. Like everything mattered.
I can still taste the whiskey from the bar nights after closing, just us, on the sticky wooden floor, dancing to our song “The Night We Met” and pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist. He’d pull me in, forehead to forehead, and whisper, “Don’t let go, ever.”
I promised I never would....
But he did.
Now, I’m drowning on the cold bathroom floor, unsure of when and how I made my way back inside, sobbing his name into the silence. “Are we out of the woods yet, Blake?” I whisper, cheek pressed to the tile. “Are we okay?” Nothing. “Will you love me again? Like I never stopped loving you?”
Silence is so much louder when it’s him not answering.
Over a decade of loving each other like war and poetry. We had stitched ourselves into a messy masterpiece. First kisses under bleachers. First fights in parking lots. First apartment with nothing but a mattress on the floor and dreams on the ceiling. We were tangled in invisible thread, and now it felt like he was sawing through it.
I scroll through photos. Our wedding Polaroids. That one shot where I’m mid-laugh, blurry, and he said it was his favourite because it wasreal. That scent still on the pillow beside me cedarand vanilla, cologne and comfort. I hug it to my chest and fall apart.
I open my text message app.
Penn, 10:03 p.m.: “Blake, please... just answer. I don’t understand what’s happening. If you’re done, say it. Just don’t leave me in this silence.”
Penn, 2:14 a.m.: “I keep listening to our song on repeat. ‘I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.’ That’s how it feels, Blake. None of you. You’re gone.”
Penn, 6:32 a.m.: sobbing “I hate you for doing this. But I love you so fucking much. That’s the worst part.”
Every word feels like a wound.
I whisper into the dark, “I can’t let you go. You’re etched into my soul, Blake. A scar I’ll never cover.”
I try to escape the spiral. Work. Research. Something. Anything. I grab my laptop and work phone, crawl into our bed,mybed now and download the first dating app I see. Dash Date. It feels wrong. A betrayal. A lie.
But maybe pretending I’m someone else can save me from this drowning.
I shake as I sign up,
I pause.
And I let myself remember: the way he kissed my fingertips before we made love. The smell of burnt coffee and old books on Sunday mornings. His laugh when I danced around the kitchen in his hoodie and nothing else. How he once said, “If the stars fall, I’ll catch them for you.”
Now I talk to the stars and hope they carry my words to him.
I want to scream. I want to sob. I want him to answer the fucking phone.
But all I get is that blinking cursor on a dating app, asking who I am.
