This Is Why I Finally Said Goodbye To You

It was the night we silently ended something we never truly had. It was excruciatingly beautiful and painful.

We started the night drinking cheap liquor in a local hippie bar in town. Just the two of us, surprisingly mindless of the people around. We talked, held hands, laughed. We talked like it was our first date, eager to savor every bit of information about each other. Some of them were things we already knew, while some were new.

I remembered looking at you intently while you told me about the first song you learned to play on guitar and mentally noted that I should listen to it more because it means something to you. It was the same night you told me about your first love who was also your first girlfriend from high school. You told me her name and you still think about her at times. I could tell that sometimes, you wish I was her.

So I sat there, listening and lovingly memorizing every detail of your face, wishing I was her.

And we drank until we were drunk enough to ignore, for the last time, the harsh reality that we were not made for each other. We drank until we were drunk enough to let each other go and as the alcohol thinned our blood, so did our time.

Our time was coming to an end and the palpable, harrowing air of goodbye was sucking the life out of my soul and I desperately wished for time to stop, for the world to freeze and for once be in my favor so I can hug you and hold you, and maybe never let you go.

I would have set a bit of me on fire, enough for a spark, just to keep us burning for a little while.

But maybe if I did, it still wouldn’t be enough because in our universe, our stars never align and we’re just an inconsequential flicker in its imposing bonfire.

That flicker, the solitary light of my life, was put off.

And so came the night, came the end. You sent me off. We said no goodbyes, just see you later but who were we fooling. One last hug and I turned around, fighting so hard with myself so as not to look back because I knew you were watching me go, possibly waiting for me to look back. To go back.

That was always the case. Every time I leave, you would just always watch me go and wait for me to come back without doing anything. You were too complacent and it was making me feel unsafe.

That was why someone had to put the flicker off even if that someone had to be me.

That was why I never looked back, why I never went back.

To see the ashes of our flicker turn gray would be too much.