Midnights In Paris | Jenlisa

An Elegy to Love

"I'm sorry
For all the things I said.
But mostly,
For all the things I'm going to say.
To get over us.
To get over you.

I despise your selfishness in the same way I despise mine
for it is what is going to break us apart.
I despise your ego, but mine most
for it's not as big as our love
but it is what is ending it.

Even though it doesn't look like it,
This is a love poem
The only one I'll ever write
An elegy to Love"

         J

The rain hummed gently against the window, a quiet melody that filled the spaces Lisa couldn't. She sat on the edge of her bed, knees drawn up, the letter trembling between her fingers like it might disintegrate if she held it too tightly.

She had already read it five times.

Each time, the words dug deeper, burrowing beneath her skin, curling around her like smoke she couldn't wave away.

"I'm sorry."

Jennie's voice haunted every curve of the ink, curling around the edges of Lisa's memory.

Lisa's thumb traced the uneven strokes, as if Jennie's presence was stitched into the paper. She wondered if Jennie had cried while writing it, or if she'd sat there, calm as ever, with that distant look in her eyes—the same one Lisa had tried so hard to pull her away from.

She hated how well she could picture it.

Lisa pressed the letter to her chest, crumpling it slightly, as though the paper might fill the hollow ache spreading beneath her ribs.

She wasn't sure how long she had been sitting there, but the pale morning light had long since faded into dull gray. The soft buzz of the refrigerator in the next room and the faint ticking of the wall clock felt louder than they should have, filling the silence left behind.

The letter was wet, the edges curling slightly from where Lisa's tears had soaked through. She hadn't realized she was crying again until the ink blurred beneath her fingertips.

It felt ridiculous—crying over a letter that had been sitting in her drawer for years. But it wasn't the letter that hurt. It was the memory it carried, the ghost of Jennie's absence pressing into Lisa's skin like a bruise that wouldn't fade.

She remembered the day she found it.

Jennie's apartment had been empty.

Lisa hadn't even noticed at first. She had dropped her bag by the door, calling out casually as she always did. "Jennie, I brought food."

Silence.

It wasn't until she wandered into the bedroom, noticing the open closet and the empty shelves, that she felt the shift in her stomach—the kind of cold that only comes when you realize something is already gone.

The letter had been on the nightstand, on her side of the bed . No explanation. No goodbye.

Just her name written carefully across the envelope.

Lisa squeezed her eyes shut, trying to shake the memory, but the words lingered like a dull ache behind her ribs.

She lowered the letter to her lap, fingers tracing the sharp crease down the middle.

Jennie had left her that day—not with words, not with a confrontation—but with silence.

And somehow, that hurt more than anything she could have said.