Last Summer

i just don't care

I was looking through my phone today

To find a particular picture of a coffee cake I once had

Instead I saw your eyes

Staring back into mine

A photo from Spring 2019

You had your hand around my waist and

I had wrapped my body around yours

The bile rises in my throat before I can catch it

I thought I scrubbed my phone clean

Of every trace of your existence

But seeing your eyes for just a second

Makes my body go red-hot with disgust

And it's not that I hate you or that I regret dating you

Just that I was someone then and someone else now

I'd try to explain it

But I have no more energy left for you

Seeing your face reminds me

Of the two unanswered essays still sitting in my inbox

That you sent me over the months we've been apart

A torrent of your feelings and your feelings and then more feelings

And I know I should respond

Maybe throw in some comforting platitudes

"It's not you, it's me" seems like it might work

Though the truth is, it was definitely you and not me

When we were together

I tried very hard

To be the best version of myself

Patient, kind, empathetic, self-abnegating to the extreme

Instead I became a sort of monster

With a bottomless pit of rage in my stomach

Unleashed on you every time you touched me or spoke

Or even breathed too close for comfort

We argued all the time

Over the phone, in empty rooms, in your car

The only time we were ever really at peace

Was late at night in bed together

And it wasn't that the sex was good

(it wasn't)

It was just that when we lay next to each other

We didn't have to speak, pretending to sleep was good enough

Loving you was exhausting to the nth degree

Mostly because I didn't actually love you

And pretending that I did took up much more effort

Than either of us ever realized

I didn't know I wasn't in love with you back then

You were in love with me

And for a girl who had never been loved before

That was an incredible feeling

You took the time to count all my birthmarks

You listened to my stories and remembered things about me

You made me feel like I was so beautiful and captivating

A real goddess of a woman

Though the truth is, I'm not very beautiful or captivating

Certainly not a goddess by any stretch of imagination

You loved me so

But didn't know me at all

And I spent all my days and my nights

Trying to be the woman you loved

Because I wanted so badly to be loved

But I guess, just not by you