It’s not supposed to go like this.
You were supposed to nod, saythanks for the explanation.
Walk me out with amaybe-next-time.
This isn’t fair to me.
I didn’t come here to hurt you again.
Why the fuck would you put me in this position?
“Andrew, we?—”
I pause. I swallow. I shake my head.
“We wouldn’t be able to see where this goes.”
My stomach is airborne?—
that sick, floating drop
before you hit the ground.
“We wouldn’t be able to make this work.
“Like, at all.”
The second I say it,
it hurts, like a punch I threw at myself.
But when I see his face,
my words don’t hurt anymore.
Because the heartbreak in his eyes
blows a fist through my chest.
It doesn’t hit him all at once.
It seeps into him,
a quiet wound locking up his jaw,
eyes holding too much,
as if he’s bleeding from somewhere I can’t see,
and trying to keep it from spilling out.
He turns his head to the side,
wets his bottom lip, tasting the sentence,
and decides it tastes like poison.
“Nah. That ain’t fuckin’ happenin’.”
