35
Win
Five Years and Eleven Months Ago
My Sunshine,
I shouldn’t have left you.
I’m a coward.
I should’ve shown you off. Held your hand. Kissed you every chance I got. I should’ve taken you out and told the world how lucky I was to call you mine. I should’ve given you everything. I should’ve kept our promise.
And I should’ve told you.
I should’ve fucking told you.
I should’ve told you ahundredthousand times.
I love you.
But if I did, leaving would’ve been impossible. And maybe I didn’t want to hear you say it back.I need to hear it.It’d be a lie— one I’d devour and demand more of. It wouldn’t have been fair to you. You’re so much stronger than me, even if you don’t believe it. So much braver for feeling all of those big, terrifying, overwhelming emotions rather than smothering them in hopes they’ll disappear. Because they don’t and there’s only so much room inside us to house the festering darkness… I’ve reached my limit, baby. I’m spilling over, infecting everyone.
Infectingyou.
I couldn’t take you down with me.
So I had to hurt you after trying my fucking hardest to protect you. I had to destroythe only thing worth living forus because you’d never let me go otherwise. And I hate myself for it. I hate myself so fucking much.
I hope you hate me too.
Hate me.
Pleaselovehate me forever.
Your Starlight
Your biggest mistake.
I crumble the letter splotched with tears, grinding my teeth as I squeeze it into a tiny ball. Rough edges bite into my trembling palms but it’s not enough. I deservemore pain.
The phone on my desk sits dead. I can’t bear to turn it on for fear of seeing his unread messages and missed calls. Or lack of them. It's been a month. Has he forgotten me already? Replaced me? Maybe Andrea swooped in and gave him everything I couldn’t. Maybe he’s finally getting better now that I’m not dragging him down.
The old twin mattress crammed into the corner of my childhood bedroom creaks as I toss another scrapped letter in the bin. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve written at this point.
The blank page of the composition notebook in my lap mocks me with whispered taunts:
You’re pathetic holding onto a boy who was never meant for you. You’re worthless. Disgusting. Damaged. No one could love you, especially not him. Let him be with someone who isn’t a lost cause.
But the idea of him holding someone else as they soothe him through nightmares and tears, someone else on the receiving end of his laugh and infectious smile, or experiencing his desperate kisses and moans—
It’s like being buried six feet deep, clawing at the lid of a coffin, forgotten underground, running out of oxygen in sweltering darkness.
I shake my head, trying and failing to stop the tears. They’re rivers flowing from an endless well where my heart used to be. The ache is worse than the hell I went through. The reality of him moving on haunts me more than the nightmares plaguing my broken mind.
Not for the first time, I regret fleeing.
But there’s no turning back; the nuke has already dropped, decimating anything worth salvaging. All that’s left behind is toxic radiation, mutating me into an unrecognizable, walking corpse.
