Chapter 14
Linking the Loose Ends
There is nothing crueler than my own mind.
It plays the same scenes on repeat, again and again, until I can’t breathe.
I sit here, alone, and I think of you with her.
I think of your mouth,
The same mouth that once whispered my name like a prayer,
now pressing against hers.
Do you kiss her the way you kissed me?
Do your hands know her like they knew me?
Do you say the same things you said to me?
Or did you save new words for her,
now that I’ve been erased?
I wonder if you laugh with her the way you laughed with me,
If you smile in that soft, silly way when she walks into a room.
I wonder if she knows the things I knew.
If she sees the parts of you I carried.
If she touched you while my fingerprints were still fading from your skin.
Because you still had my marks on you.
And you went to her anyway.
You married her.
After months. Months.
You chased her with the same heart that once beat for me.
With the same lips that tasted like goodbye when you left.
You gave her a life that I had built in my dreams.
A home that I had held for us.
And I—I am left with fragments.
Words you said.
Promises you never made to break.
Photographs that don’t look like lies, yet.
Sentences that play like lullabies and land like knives.
Some clothes.
A toothbrush.
A mark on you from me in the shape of bracelet you kept on you.
Things. Just things. Not you.
Because you’re gone. Not just gone—you’re hers.
And whenever I think about it, I fall apart in places I didn’t know
could break.
At first, I cried.
I wept until my body shook and my voice vanished.
But now,
now, the tears are gone.
And what’s left is worse.
A stone in my chest.
A bull of fire lodged in my throat.
A weight that has made a home inside me.
That pain,
it’s part of me now.
As much a part of me as you were.
As you are.
As you’ll always be.
The pain wears your face.
And every time I see it, more memories come.
More images I never wanted.
You, standing beside her in a house that was supposed to be ours.
You, holding her hand as if it had never held mine.
You, living a life I had once dared to believe in.
I wanted you. I hoped for you.
God, I yearned for you.
And you’re there—
with her.
And I’m still here.
Losing my mind.
Losing my love.
Losing myself.
And about to end everything.