When I met you I was life and you were water. And I needed you. And you’ve always been so gentle. You were the warmth of the sun and I was the atmosphere. You changed me when I met you. I changed me when I met you. I changed me before I met you. 

Your new girlfriend is beautiful. But she’s not so new anymore. I remember when I saw her on your Instagram for the first time last spring. I saw her and I knew. That’s who I am. I think maybe you’d laugh  at that because you know how I have to know everything. She’s so pretty and her smile looks like summer.

I can’t explain how heartbreak feels but I can scream it. It felt like I was shattered twice because I lost you and then myself too. I had become a collective “we” by that point. How will I carry pain if he doesn’t carry it for me? How will I touch myself if he doesn’t use his hands to do it?

I sat in the same clothes. I didn’t shower because I didn’t want the way you smelled to be washed away. Or how it felt when you held me for a long time after you’d already ended us. That’s who you are. I remember that. I will remember that.

Over the summer I found an old roll of film. Couldn’t remember where it was from. Developed it and of course it was all pictures of times I was with you. I burned them in a parking lot we used to sit in. You always hear about people doing that sort of shit after breakups and that it’s cathartic. And I didn’t want pieces if I couldn’t have anything back. But now I kinda wish I had them because after they were gone I felt them burning in the pit of my stomach.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll continue to expand and pull apart and come back together. And you’ll be pushed further away. We’ll get older and date other people and move to other cities. I hope you pursue music. I hope you get everything you want and see beautiful things and fall in love with someone who will love you back forever. I hope the same for myself. I don’t think I want you anymore but. I still love you kinda in the way that I love the cabin in the woods my family had when I was a kid. That’s how you always felt to me. A home away from home. 

You wanted me to write and draw more. I wrote you a poem after we’d been dating for a few months but I wish I’d built you a museum. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate you more. I’m happy you’re happy.