Jill Bautista

I keep trying to recall how we got here. I’m trying to connect the dots from the first time we met to the time we found ourselves sitting together late at night, talking about the most random things.

Here we are again, sitting on our bed away from each other. It’s late, yet we’re wide awake, fresh from another fight that started from something I thought wouldn’t be a big deal.

You walk me to the train station. Nobody says anything. The silence is deafening.

What keeps you up all night? And what wakes you up gasping for air in the wee hours? What makes you want to just sleep and leave your reality for even just a little bit? 

For the first time, I went home at the end of the day, not in the slightest bit bothered whether I said too much or whether I showed too much of my vulnerability, because there wasn’t an ounce of judgment. For the first time, I said what I really meant to say, not what I thought you’d want to hear. 

I called in sick that day.

I don’t want you to be my poetry. I don’t want all the beautiful phrases I can possibly compose to be about you.

You see me in all my flaws, yet you’re still in. You don’t put me on a pedestal, but you put me in place.

I’m not sorry for putting myself out of this misery of falling in love with you, because you were never going to love me back.

I lost my virginity to a predator wearing a mask of someone who could never hurt a fly.

I’m happy in a way that I can cry, and that is never a sign of weakness or a crappy life.

I want a heartbreak that’s going to make me more fearless and curious and human.

I hope you start trying to do those things you’ve always wanted to try but never had the courage to do so because you think it’ll just throw you off from your game plan.

They didn’t know that those smiles in those photos you showed them were your desperate ways of convincing yourself you were happy with him.

And we’re both aware that’s that, aren’t we? 

Other people’s validation may be something, but it’s never the only thing that’ll keep you going. 

I am fine, and I always will be. 

You know your game. And you play it so damn well.