That Night In Your Kitchen

There was that night in your kitchen.

Somehow I’m yelling at you again. Why am I always yelling at you?

You’d tuned out before I even started. You could see it bubbling up underneath and you knew to retreat behind your wall, to gather your defenses—get ready to strike with the slightest but deadliest of blows.

“You’re trying to get me to care about something. You’re trying to make me feel something I don’t.”

This alone silences me. This alone tells me everything I need to know. I walk a few steps away to process.

You’re sorry enough to feel some remorse—this I know. I can see it behind your eyes. You feel bad that I feel bad, but not for what you did. Because though you care enough about me to some extent, you’ll never care enough to bring (what I would call) justice to our situation.

I’m not sure if that’s something that will ever settle. The realization that someone you carved a canyon sized hole in your heart for only carved out a bucket in theirs. Because how do you reconcile that? How do you look at someone that has the power to drown you, only to realize they wouldn’t even know they were doing it?

I return to the kitchen. I look at you and I break. Some resolve I thought I had built cracks. How do you dissolve me so quickly? I long to be ached for. I wish for someone to burn the way I do. The way I did, anyway. The way I used to for you.

I realize we’re getting nowhere because you’re already turning it back on me, and I can’t really blame you. Enough time has passed that you’re allowed to be critical and you’re not even wrong. I have to take it. I realize you make the ugly parts of me come out.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for in your kitchen. Some sort of solution, I guess. I never get it. I beg for the minutes to pass slower, but they never do. I wait for you to tell me everything I want to hear, but you never do. You never will.

I leave your kitchen, your apartment, and your town. It’s all yours now—we both know I don’t belong there anymore. My space is filled with someone new and my time has long since run out.

But there’s that moment in time I’ll hold onto when I need it. There are those hours I’ll keep that were just between us.

There was that night in your kitchen.