u/Slight_Flight_4472

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

Love letters ask for something.
A return.
A reply.
A possibility.
This asks for nothing.
J can remain exactly where he is.
There is no bridge under construction,
no hidden blueprint for reunion,
no romantic code buried between lines.
There is simply history.
And history deserves accuracy.
I wasn’t perfect.
There were reactions I regret,
words that became cruel,
moments where hurt turned toxic
instead of becoming a boundary.
That’s mine.
I’ll carry it long enough to learn from it—
not long enough to become it.
His behavior belongs on his side of the ledger.
No theft required.
No rewriting necessary.
Two people can have toxic behaviors
without being equally responsible
for every individual event.
Two people can have wounds
without those wounds granting permission
to create new ones.
And two people can once love each other
without belonging together again.
That’s the part people confuse.
Watcher: If you’re still writing, you still care.
Mind: Probably.
Watcher: Then you want him.
Mind: No.
Caring isn’t consent to return.
Missing isn’t a reservation.
Grief isn’t pursuit.
And remembering someone
doesn’t mean saving them a seat.
There is no seat.
There is no invitation.
There is only a chapter
still being understood—
and a life
that continues
after the page turns.

Hello everybody so I’m highly sensitive person with CPTSD and like I’m addicted to weed alcohol and Adderall.

Did anyone else have this situation with no support system and did you overcome your addictions please? They’re destroying my life. I can’t live like this anymore.

I must be herrrr knowing you be texting other exes and im the only one you chose

Thank you

Jeff