u/Slight_Flight_4472

Dear….

There are two places I have returned to now that know exactly where to hurt me somehow. I walk through the door. I try to act fine
but the past starts pacing right beside mine. It starts with a corner.. a room… a light then suddenly you are everywhere in sight. Not literally there but close enough. Still that memory can bend my will.
One place brings back how everything began. When I thought I had finally met a safe man. The looks.. the laughter.. the pull… the spark… the feeling of finding a light in the dark. All through the day those moments replay. Little scenes that refuse to stay buried away. I hear what you said. I remember your face. I remember exactly how you stood in that place. Then tension comes crawling up into my spine.
My jaw starts clenching, my shoulders align. Somehow like my body remembers before I can think.
By afternoon I am right at the brink.
The migraine arrives like it paid for the room, pressure and pounding and nowhere to move. Behind both my eyes, through my temple and neck. Meanwhile memory keeps dragging me back through the wreck. And the worst part is that they aren’t all filled with pain. Some memories still feel like standing in rain after months of a drought.. like comfort almost like home.. Like some little piece of me
still doesn’t know you’re gone. That is what kills me. Not anger. Not hate. It’s missing somebody I know came with weight. It’s knowing the ending, remembering the start,
and feeling them fighting for space in my heart. The second place carries a different old ache, the things I overlooked, the excuses I’d make. The tension.. The distance the ways you withdrew….The slow realization I didn’t know you. But even in that place with the evidence clear…There are moments I swear I still wish you were near. Not the cruelty. Not everything bad. I miss the familiar.
I miss what we had. I miss hearing your voice in the middle of days.
I miss knowing your habits…your moods… your ways. I miss that stupid feeling that somewhere was mine because you were inside it
at some point in time. So being there now is a strange kind of hell..
My mind knows the story, my body knows it well. Every hour carries
another old scene another reminder of what we once had been. By the time I leave, my head feels split through… My nerves completely fried from remembering you. I hate that I miss you. I hate that it’s true. I hate that those places still somehow mean you. I can know every reason
we should never restart. I can memorize every betrayal by heart.
I can know I deserve something safer and new… Still walk through those doors and ache over you.
So maybe those places will always contain some version of us wrapped tightly in pain. Maybe that is the price of loving someone deep? The places move on,
but the memories keep. Every time I return, my body pays too. the tension, the migraines,
and God, how I still miss you.

—
K

Dear JD….🫶

Grandpa, Grandpa, 1,2,3 Who told you you was a prize to me? 😂 4,5,6 go sit your ass down, You got Caesar confidence with a circus clown crown.👑☠️ Grandpa, Grandpa, 7,8 Twenty-seven extra years and still learning morals this late? 9, 10…let’s add a spin…Age kept coming… When it was wisdoms time to shine she said no and ducked away far behind.🫡
Grandpa had 💰money …Grandpa had cash, Grandpa thought a wallet made him hot shit fast💀💀
Listen to the Jingle jangle, card go swipe, Still couldn’t buy an empathy or a personality type. Nickel, dime, dollar bill,
Money can’t purchase emotional skills….😭 Visa here, Mastercard there, still couldn’t buy one ounce of care. Grandpa says, Look what I got!?!? Babe congratulations you banked a lot. Does Chase sell morals? Does Wells Fargo sell grace? Because neither one seemed deposited in your dead face. 😂 1, 2, 3 count every degree Grandpa had money but no heat for me. Grandpa, Grandpa, puff that chest, Couldn’t change a tire but swore he was the best🔫😩 Vroom-vroom, click-click, car said not now bitch. Grandpa hollered, “call roadside!” 🚗 Caesar fell! Rome went black! Somebody get the roadside rescue back! Grandpa stood there, masculinity shook, While the handsome tow man finished the job. 1 little battery, 2 little wires, Grandpa walking round like he invented tires 🛞 3 little lug nuts, 4 little pleas “Can somebody call roadside assistance please?” 😂 Grandpa, Grandpa, big-man show, Mechanic skills said “We don’t know him, though. All that swagger, all that pride,
to beat and threaten a women all the time. but shocker you cannot fix simple things on her ride??
Then Grandpa’s phone went flip flop on a random weekend…
Screen hit the table…💣💥bam 💥💣 phone planted face down. 📱
Hide it high,⬆️hide it low,⬇️
Grandpa got secrets in the dim glow.. Face down phone, face up lie, Grandpa looking shocked like, How you know and why? Sir, you switched habits right in my face,
Then acted like eyesight was invading your space. Women here, women there, Comments about bodies flying everywhere..
Who you’d wish to fuck from work, who looked fine, Then Grandpa got mad when I connected the line.
1 clue, 2 clue, 3 clue, 4…Grandpa kept dropping info on the floor;
5 clue, 6 clue, 7 came free Then Grandpa yelled, “ wonder if I’m WATCHING THEE?” 😂Motherfucker, YOU TALKED.
I ain’t climb through windows.I ain’t bug your car. I ain’t hire detectives from somewhere afar. You ran your mouth like a podcast host, Then wondered why I knew the most. Psychology major, human behavior Grandpa supplied cruel glitches in human behavior. One After another, after another, after ten then wonder why the games would finally beginning? Then wondered why I noticed a sly narcissistic eye? Projection, projection, what do you see? Whatever Grandpa hated, tossed onto me. Avoidance, run real quick.. Deflection showed up with another cheap trick. Triangulation skipped down the hall.. Attachment issues bouncing a ball. Denial yelled, “It wasn’t me!”
While evidence sat there drinking tea. ☕😂 Grandpa thought chess was what he played, Grandpa, sweetheart, no… you played charades. Uno card held in your wrinkly grip, Yelling “CHECKMATE!” like you’d done some shit. Draw Four here, chessboard there, Grandpa mixing games without a care…” Crayon,, on the wall, Grandpa wrote his name real tall; Marker on fingers, blue on head, “Wasn’t me!” old Grandpa said. 🖍️ Who did then? Grandpa doesn’t know. Whose handwriting? Grandpa says Joe.
Who got the Sharpie? Grandpa right there. Preschool detectives solved that affair. 😂 Then came Grandpa’s coffee crew,
He’s nice to ME, so it can’t be true!”
Sip-sip latte, foam on top,
Apparently morality came from the coffee shop. ☕ 1 cup, 2 cup, Charles got 3, Now Grandpa’s canonized morally… He bought me coffee! everybody pathetically cries… Well SHIT, somebody notify the Nobel peace Prize. Ring the bell! Call the Pope! Grandpa bought espresso, there’s finally hope! Kant wasted years, Aristotle was dumb…Should’ve just checked where the Starbucks came from. 😂 “He’s good at his work!”
“He’s such a doll!” Baby, that doesn’t tell you private shit at all. Work Grandpa nice, Dating Grandpa foul… Different damn context, different damn towel.
1 little coworker, 2 little views,
Neither one lived in my damn shoes… 3 little opinions… 4 little pleas, Still don’t make workplace Grandpa who I received. Public charm wears shiny shoes… Private character picks what it’ll choose..
Anybody’s sweet when the crowd says “yay..” Character shows when the crowd walks away. Grandpa, Grandpa, gossip train, Everybody riding without a brain..🧠 Choo-choo, rumor, round the bend,
People discussing shit they never attended. 🚂 Binocular left, binocular right, Whole retirement crew got plans tonight…
Bingo postponed, coffee brewed,
Everybody got a doctorate in shit they never knew. 😂 When I had problems, what did I do? Pulled Grandpa aside and spoke to YOU.
No lunchroom choir, no gossip parade …Just adult conversation directly made. But poke-poke-poke the hornet hive… Then act surprised when bees come alive; Kicked their house for fun, Then call HR yelling, “LOOK WHAT THEY DONE!” 🐝 Buzz-buzz, Grandpa, use your head… The bees were chilling till you kicked their bed.
You can’t start shit then clutch your pearls… Like consequences came from magical worlds. Grandpa saw lonely and thought, “She’ll bend.” Grandpa saw kindness and thought, “No end.”
Grandpa saw empathy and thought, “She’s weak.” Grandpa misread every trait that week.
1 backbone, 2 backbone…mine stayed straight, I learned standing alone long before our date…No cheering crowd? Still stood tall.
Grandpa leaving wasn’t Judgment Day at all. Boom thunder? Nope.
Sky fall down? Nope. Grandpa leave and suddenly peace came round. 😂 Less to decode…less confusion… Less Grandpa Behavioral Science Institution…
My nervous system packed its bag,
Said… “I am done investigating this hag.” just because I write doesn’t mean I want you here. Baby, what logic got us there? A poem ain’t Tinder. A rhyme ain’t thirst.
Sometimes I document exactly why shit was worse.
History,, read the page,
People document disasters every age🤦‍♀️ Pompeii burned, Titanic sank, Nobody trying to take that iceberg to the bank. Plague got books, wars got dates, Nobody says, “I miss those great old days!😂 Writing means writing. Record means record. Sometimes the past needs a permanent ledger. People revise when truth gets sore…So ink remembers a little bit more. And Grandpa, honey, since you still seem slow…Let’s practice one sentence you already know….
I WOULD NOT TOUCH YOU WITH A TEN-FOOT POLE. 📏
Repeat after me…👄👄🫦 Nice and slow. Ten means ten. Pole means pole. No means no. That was the goal. Not 9 feet and horny.
Not 8 feet and cute. Not 7 feet waiting in a birthday suit. Not 6 feet “maybe.” Not5 feet “please baby.” Ten damn feet, Grandpa give me space to feel the breeze. 😂
11 works. 12 sounds nice. 25?
Fuck it, double it twice. Call Home Depot, extend the pole… Put state lines between us if zoning allows. 🚧 Caution tape yellow, traffic cone red, Grandpa still somehow hears,
“She wants me in bed.”
Sir. At that point I need crayons again, Because English clearly ain’t getting in. 🖍️ Draw one woman.
Draw one man. Draw ten feet between where they stand.
Draw one arrow pointing away,
Write underneath: “GRANDPA, NOT TODAY.” 😂
I can miss safe. I can miss hope.
I can miss who I thought you were before I coped. I can miss an era and still know why I never want that shit back in my life.
I miss cheap groceries but I ain’t fucking aisle two. I miss my old Facebook account but i ain’t outside Zuck’s home. Nostalgia don’t mean I want the mascot’s bone. 😂 See, Grandpa?
Easy-peasy. Memory exists without getting freaky. You weren’t Prince Charming, soulmate, king no were near to a god like you think. Grandpa, Grandpa, rhyme is done, Hope our little lesson was educational fun.

—
k

Dear Dev…..🫵🫵🫵🖕🏻🤞🏻

You asked me like a friend, then handled my answer like evidence.👯🏻🤨🙂‍↔️interesting…. I was wrong. I can hold myself accountable for what I said, the trust I misplaced and the words I should’ve guarded better. But don’t confuse my accountability for your innocence. That’s just plain ignorant. My biggest mistake was trusting you enough to believe I could answer honestly without being punished for it. Ooops my bad 🤭I truly thought I was speaking to a friend. I hadn’t yet caught on to the fact i was being led into a set up.🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️(a mistake I’ll never make twice.) you were no better than the gossip mob.(And had the audacity to wonder why I didn’t want to be around any of you.) You asked me like a friend, and discussed me like I were absent. You didn’t “stumble” across that information. You, him and I know that. (Your report distorted the true story. That was the most shocking part of it all.) you requested it, obtained it under the cover of trust and cared it as if that vulnerability were yours to punish. So please, save me the moral high ground and false claims of playing victim. You’re not standing on principle lol. Your character shifts with whoever enters the room mine does not. Move over, you knew why you were asking.🙄You knew where the answer was going. I sensed something was off about that conversation and you asking infromt of the individual. I did not expect you to be such a snake. Though perhaps I should have? No wonder y'all two get along so well. You recognize the same language in each other. You quiet question, borrowed confidence, stories carried into the next place you go, and your sudden innocence when the person your gossiping about is close enough to hear you.
Furthermore, I find it fucking HILARIOUS how you try to gaslight me about what occurred. You cannot be honest on paper or to my face. What in the hell makes you think id ever believe your version of events over my own lived experienced? Immediately jumping to I'm crying victim of coincidence or whatever. When in reality you don't want to be held responsible for your OWN shady behavior. I was THERE FYI. I HEARD y'all btw 😘 I know exactly who you become when you think that person isn't around listening to your nonsense that you'd never talk directly to them about. Ugh just so you know (clearly you seem as if you don't in your 40s) Accountability isn't a spot light youpoint toward someone else while Acting as if you yourself are immuned to it. I confessed my part that day. I can name my fault without pretending yours doesn't exist or erases it. Spare everyone a moral speech from someone a fluid with their character as yourself. You don't get to dress gossip in concern and betrayal in honesty🚨 STOP rewriting conversations because the truth makes you look BAD or feel UNCOMFORTABLE. Now your turn. Since you've so much time to write and gossip about me in spaces you don't think I occupy. Develop some courage to recognize what you did. How far you took it. How insanely selfish it is to be one of the many individuals participating in lies and false information , ask for information from someone who viewed you as a friend, and get them in trouble over a single word. And for the love of everything holy stop pretending you're better than people you did wrong. Now you blocked me (trash taking itself out thank you.) If Karma for me is getting a better position, better pay, Better company and never have to look at your back stabbing pathetic face anymore is bad? Than let it be. This opportunity fell upon me by word of mouth. I was offered several different positions and I chose this one. Now I'll not be taking orders from him but he will from me. I had it less than a week of your shenanigans. Karma will repay you for what you done. This will be my last time addressing this. It’s the principle of what you did and how you got that information. You must’ve known too since you left it out of your report. I hope you get threefold of this and your wife doesn’t need to stalk 15 damn stores on my FB yes I’ve screenshots too.

—
KK

Oh, A….

I have studied this game before,
watched men mistake absence for leverage, silence for mystery,
disappearing for power. The trouble is, a game requires two people willing to keep score.
I do not care enough to chase you,
and strangely, I do not care enough to end it either. You may come.
You may go. You may vanish into whatever corridors you believe make you more interesting. I am busy. There are mornings still happening, money still to make, music still playing, places I have not yet ruined by attaching someone’s name to them. And perhaps that is what your disappearances have purchased you…… not longing, not obsession,
not even anger just distance.
Because every time you disappear,
some small part of me learns
not to expect your return.
Keep practicing long enough, darling, and you may eventually accomplish the very thing you thought I would be terrified of:
I may never become emotionally attached to you at all.

—

KK

Dear J…

**🎭🕰**️💌💃🏻🥂☠️
Step left. 👠 Step right. 🕺
The email slept for thirty nights. 😴💌🌙 Heel, toe. 👠 Turn around. 💃🏻
Not one peep. 🤐 Not one damn sound. 🪦 For twenty-nine days
the room stayed bare, 🕯️ no violins, 🎻 no gossip there. 🤫 Then Day Thirty arrived in red, ❤️‍🔥 like “I heard the plot was almost dead.” 💃🏻☠️🎭 Bold. 😏 Very bold. 💅🏻
She wore black lace, 🖤 a diamond grin, 💎 then Timing said “Let Act Two begin.” 🎬🕰️ AA appeared. The curtains rose. 🎭 Coincidence adjusted her evening clothes. 👗🥂
I looked at her. 👁️ She looked at me. 👁️ I said “Girl, don’t start.” 😒
She said “Who, me?” 😇👀 Yes. You. 👉🏻😂 You’re wearing pearls
to a crime scene. 📿☠️ Relax.
Nobody said what anything means. 😂🤷🏻‍♀️

—

KK

Dear A…

Day one was where we lost our damn minds.🤯
The sheets wrecked, my hands unable to stay off you, your face changing with every stroke,
every reaction growing more intense whenever your name left my mouth. I begged. I moaned your name. And every time I said it A, something in your expression shifted harder, like hearing your name from me pulled another reaction straight out of you. We did everything👅🙈👅🥀 like the room had no rules and neither did we. Then came day two. The massage, The slow caressing, That fucking ear thing that made me wonder whether you had secretly studied exactly how to ruin my composure. Different day. Different kind of trouble. Same man underneath all that sweetness. And now I’m sitting here thinking damn, A. I want both days again. 🍑🍆💋

—

KK

Dear A…

You seem so composed, A and that’s precisely what makes me suspicious. Because every time I look at you, I wonder what lives beneath all that patience, that handsome smile, that gentleman restraint. Are you always gentle?
Or does your voice get lower
when desire takes over?
Are you the kind of man who likes taking the lead, who knows exactly what he wants without ever needing to announce it? Because just wondering how dominant you might be sends chills through me.
I’m kind, A. Affectionate. Soft hearted. I’ll kiss your cheek,
listen to your thoughts, and curl against you like that’s exactly where I belong. But don’t mistake kindness for innocence.
I’m kind & kinky,☺️🙈
sweet with a wicked streak,😉
soft enough to adore you and curious enough to test that beautiful composure.😘🍆
Maybe I’d tease you just to watch your expression change.
Maybe I’d push your patience
just enough to discover whether that gentleman voice has a deeper tone. And maybe that’s what
turns me on the most is not knowing yet. Looking at this calm, gorgeous man and wondering what happens when the bedroom door closes and politeness no longer has to do all the talking.
So tell me, A…. Are you really as sweet as you look? Or am I going to discover that underneath the gentleman is exactly the kind of trouble that gives a kind, kinky woman chills down her spine, knees weak, and throbbing begging for it.

—
KK

Dear…

Well, this is inconvenient I had plans to stay detached, to flirt a little, laugh a lot, and keep my feelings latched. Then here comes Mr. Handsome, all grown-man charm and nerve, asking me to be his girlfriend like my heart had not observed. Sir, I was doing perfectly fine pretending I was chill.
Now I’m smiling at my phone again
against my stubborn will I said I wouldn’t fall too fast, I’d learned that lesson well then you went and asked me properly. …So there goes that to hell. 😂

—

KK

Dear….

Perhaps the cruelest thing
about soulmates is believing they must remain. Maybe they don’t.
Maybe sometimes they marry you,
lose you, become your ex,
and years later open their heart for an evening just enough to remind you why yours once chose them.
You thanked me tonight.
And something inside me whispered, “There you are.
The man beneath everything.”
The familiar soul. Although life may call you my ex-husband now,
some quiet part of me will always call you my soulmate.

—

KK

Dear…

Imagine a midnight library Freud arguing with cocaine, Dostoevsky bargaining with roulette, Hemingway pouring another glass,
Sartre swallowing another stimulant because apparently existentialism had deadlines.
Brilliant minds, terrible coping skills. Humanity does enjoy irony.
Perhaps somewhere between philosophy and psychological theory there should’ve been a chapter titled: Knowing Exactly Why You’re Doing Something
Does Not Miraculously Make You Stop. I could’ve contributed footnotes. Not because destruction deserves romance, nor because suffering earns genius, but because I’ve learned something humiliatingly human: you can understand your patterns, hate your patterns,
analyze them beautifully and still have to fight like hell
to change them. So no, I wasn’t stupid. Sometimes I simply knew the answer long before I learned
how to live it.

—

KK

Dear…

Someone makes me smile now.
That sentence feels much bigger to write than it probably looks.
Not because I’m madly in love. Not because I’ve decided he’s the answer to every bad thing that came before him. I’m actually trying very hard not to make him responsible for any of that. I just like him. And he talks to me.
Consistently!! Sometimes while he’s busy.❤️ Sometimes about nothing important at all.❤️
And it turns out the conversations about nothing are occasionally the ones that mean the most. Because I remember how often I wanted those moments with you.🤔
Not some enormous romantic gesture. Just the feeling that you were happy I was there. I spent so much time measuring myself against your responses that I forgot communication involves two people! If you were distant, I searched myself for the reason.
If you answered with three words, I wondered whether I had said too many. If you disappeared emotionally, I wondered what version of myself might convince you to return. I don’t do that nearly as much with him.
And that has been unexpectedly healing.
I know I brought my own fears into what we had. I know I wasn’t perfect. I’m not rewriting history to make myself innocent and you entirely responsible. But perspective has taught me something important: Some of my anxiety belonged to me.
Some of it grew inside a relationship where I rarely knew where I stood. Both things can be true. I don’t know what happens with this man. But he makes me happy today. And today is enough.
Maybe moving on isn’t forgetting you. Maybe it’s finally meeting parts of myself that never had enough room to breathe while I was loving you.

—
KK

Dear…

I see somebody’s been ordering catastrophes again heartbreak, humiliation, failure, a beautifully curated collection of pain. Quite the ambitious little menu. Waiting for the stumble, watching for the fall, as though wishing loudly enough might make fate answer the call. But what we wish upon another has an uncanny sense of direction sometimes the poison thrown outward becomes its sender’s reflection. You wanted darkness somehow it taught the wounded to glow. You waited for collapse with almost religious devotion, while the supposed casualty quietly learned emotional locomotion. Every betrayal became discernment. Every abandonment drew a line. Every cruel little prediction became something left behind. And that must be terribly inconvenient digging a grave so carefully only to discover
the corpse declined the invitation.
The undertaker checking the clock, the mourners dressed in black,
while the person everyone expected buried is somewhere getting their life back.
Maya Angelou already ruined
the ending to this little tragedy:
“But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
Not toward anyone. Not begging for recognition. Not resurrecting old bridges or confusing longing with permission. Simply rising
scarred enough to remember,
wise enough not to return, and finally understanding that you belong in my past. So bad news for the undertaker: cancel the flowers,
return the hearse, close the grave.
The person somebody hoped
would disappear beneath the dirt
learned instead how beautifully
the buried can behave when they rise.

—

KK

Dear….

I think I might say yes to him.
Not forever just a date.
A drink, a laugh, an evening spent
testing what exists beyond old fate.
But I’d be lying if I claimed
your memory had completely disappeared. Some feelings don’t obey commands; they simply grow quieter with the years.
So maybe I’ll sit beside someone new while a little piece still aches for you. That doesn’t mean I’m going backward. It only means the feeling once was true.
Perhaps I’ll like him.
Perhaps I won’t.
Perhaps my heart will finally surprise me.
Because missing somebody from the past doesn’t mean the future has to pass me by.

—
KK

Dear….

There is a librarian in my mind
who refuses to remove you from circulation. I have filed the ending,
signed the necessary papers,
returned every borrowed hope.
Still, she keeps your volume
behind the desk.
Restricted access.
Naturally, she reads it every night.
She remembers paragraphs
I deliberately forgot, the warmth between certain sentences,
the chapters where love
had not yet learned its ending.
Sometimes I catch her
running her fingers over your name.
Again? I ask.
She shrugs.
Some books are terrible for us
and beautifully written. Your memory remains sentimental to the librarian, so you are still
the book she refuses to throw away.

—
KK

Dear…

Perhaps you packed my memory away
and labeled the box Deceased,
then buried every tenderness
until your mind found peace.
Good for you. Truly. Marvelous.
I’d like that talent too,
because life keeps delivering packages
containing pieces of you.
Mutual mouths mention things
they probably shouldn’t say;
places resurrect an afternoon,
songs dig up past memories somedays.
I never ordered any of it.
I’ve checked the receipt twice through.
Apparently fate has confused my address
with the cemetery of you.
Still, I won’t return to knock
upon a door I once walked through.
Some reminders aren’t instructions
sometimes memory simply proves
a heart can leave a person
before their echoes leave you.

—
KK

Dear….

So the ghost still knows the address, Even though it’s not a frequent visitor; a passing glance through old terrain, then back into forgetfulness to be forgotten. There was a time the shadow came often, now it barely leaves a trace
just enough to make it obvious
some memories keep their place.
Only a figure in the distance
searching what remains unseen.
And strangely, there is sweetness
in how quiet it became
two lives moving separately,
with memory doing the same.

—
KK

I can’t say the call meant anything to me.

How could it? I had no idea it was you on the other end of the line.

I was somewhere behind the conversation,
laughing like people normally do
giggling without guarding the sound,
never knowing whose voice was coming through.
You called your friend.
He said he’d call you back.
When he did, there were dinner plans,
ordinary conversation, ordinary chat.

He didn’t see fit to mention me. Good man. I’d made it clear to him well before that day, “If you see him, don’t tell him I’m here.” I had no use for my name being put in your ear by way of some calculated coincidence or hidden signal.

So I let myself laugh as one does, without any regard of the sound, not knowing whose voice was speaking. You both talked on and I laughed off in the distance, and we were both none the wiser to how close an ordinary moment like that came to our world colliding again.

Then you hung up. He said your name in passing.

Wait.

That was you?

Well, hell. My brain just went.

All of a sudden every little giggle was running through my head again with one absurd question: did you hear me?

Did some tiny laugh get through the phone? Did you catch a voice you once knew and wonder for half a second who was near?

Probably not. More likely I was nothing but distant noise behind your friend.

Yet when he reported back that you had inquired who was around, it was enough to turn my whole mood. I found myself smiling for hours. Actual hours. A bit humiliating for a woman who is supposed to be in control of herself.

There was a tenderness to it that I can’t quite put my finger on. I didn’t know it was you, you didn’t know I was there. Nothing was put on for either of us.

So I allowed myself to dwell on it. Perhaps you happened to hear me smile on your side of the phone. Not in tears or anger, not trying to have you take back your goodbye. Just laughing.

It may not matter in the end. Only time will get you out of my head, though it seems to move at a snail’s pace. But until then I will conclude this to pounder on that you might have heard me happy, maybe made you miss me. It made me miss you. And it made me smile for quite a while after so thank you.

—
KK

Karma looked at both of us
and sighed, “Oh, what a pair.”
Two people filing grievances
while adding to the wear.
You brought your sins, I brought my tongue,
both sharpened for defense;
apparently emotional warfare
has terrible recompense.
So no, I won’t request your ruin
that seems dramatically passé.
I’ve got my own karmic coursework,
and you’ve got yours to pay.
May mine teach restraint without silence,
may yours teach truth without disguise;
may both of us become too wise
to weaponize what made us cry.
And if fate gives us happiness
on entirely separate shores,
perhaps that’s karma too
becoming better people
who don’t hurt anyone
the way we hurt before.

—KK

Dear…

So you would have me put you out of my mind? Very well, my dear.
Then tell me why I am constantly in the habit of hearing your name.

I make no inquiries and don’t trouble myself to look about,
and yet bits and pieces of you are invariably put in front of me.

Your friends have a way of letting things slip, as if pouring wine on a page,
and before one know it, some old longing has broken free.
A memory will rouse itself and put in an appearance to ask about you;
one can only find it rude of nostalgia to be so uninvited.

At times I question why they see fit to share these things with me.
Is there something between us they spot that we prefer not to name?
They must be aware I have feelings for you in spite of what has passed,
that a person can miss another long after the want has faded.

Perhaps they imagine you are nursing some private ache,
a feeling you keep well concealed.
But I have my doubts you are with your crowd saying,
“Do let her have the latest news, I find I miss her as well.”

It is rather ironic, in its own way.
You were quite set on having your memory done away with.
And yet your associates are always at the door with a tale or two,
each one of them serving to remind me of you.

—

KK

I suspect there is something people don’t get about it.
It was not the cruelty I was after.
What I missed was the person I thought I had
a true sight of, the one that lay beneath it.

In my grief I put things under a microscope,
and in doing so made some discoveries.
You can come to an understanding once
every bridge is burned and you have the distance for it.

I won’t make a romance of my rage;
there were extremes to what I did.
Give me back the page and I would
never put pen to paper on some of those lines.

But don’t think my toxicity is some kind of
holy water to absolve me. I can look back
with regret at what I turned into and what I
witnessed.

Make of your new rules what you will,
only don’t be dishonest with history.
The end of us bore no resemblance to
what you put on offer at the start.

So I am left calling you a selfish little killer.
You had a way of butchering trust with your
contradictions and then holding the wound
responsible for the blood.

Was I a monster? In the heat of it, yes.
But also someone I held in high regard.
Love does not go quietly when told to,
and that is what made the mourning last.

—KK