Mingyu Shorts

Herself

The first night he left her, the only thing she could think of was missing him. Her thoughts occupied solely by the way his arms wrapped around her, the way his fingers traced each of her stretch marks when she cried about her weight, how his side of the bed felt as if it had moulded perfectly to his shape and without him there it wouldn't know what to do with its cold emptiness.

Within the first week of him being gone, she had thought of him every single second she was awake. Every time she took a breath, she wondered if he was taking one too. If she thought about him hard enough she could hear his voice or smell his cologne, a soft sound, a light fragrance, both quickly wisped away in the chilling winds of December.

By the time a few months had passed, her thoughts of him became fleeting. It wasn't that she didn't miss him, she just found herself thinking about that pain less. She woke up every day for herself. She took longer showers and wore her hair all-natural and curly. She danced around her empty apartment blaring music that he hated, not because she knew he hated it, but because it just sounded really fucking good. She ate food that made her happy, wore clothes that made her happy, and at some point in all of that happiness she began living for herself.

That was when he came back. When she had finally begun making progress for herself, he walked back into her life. It was an accidental text, one typed early in the morning when the only people awake were up to no good. The type of message that only the haze of alcohol could provide the confidence to type. She allowed herself to imagine those digital letters as actual words falling from his beautiful lips in an unfiltered slur. Each word heavy on his tongue, but an apology nonetheless.

A drunken apology was all it took for her to forget who she was again and maybe that was because Mingyu always left as if he had never been gone at all. He left as if he would come back and when he did come back, it was always at the exact moment that she had realised she could do things on her own. He left with the bed unmade and the smell of his favourite cologne wafting through the apartment. He left with his favourite shirt still on its hanger, still on his side of the closet, untouched. He left with the television on, volume up, playing his show and as soon as she was finally ready to turn it off or pack up his things, he came back. Mingyu never fully left and she could never fully heal.