So Here I Go... Again

So here I go. I get off earlier from work by means of a silly excuse, sit on the couch and think on all the ways we will break up. I light up a cigarette and imagine how you dump me on my birthday, on your birthday, on our anniversary, on the 4th of July. I thoroughly imagine all the ways in which we won’t be happy. I see us struggling through life and slowly but surely starting to hate each other. I picture myself burning pictures and sending you a message that reads we are over. I visit the rooms in which you cheat on me and smell the sheets and swear to God I will loathe you forever. I sign the papers for our divorce and beg my lawyer to do his best to leave you on the street. You see me through a window kissing someone else. I see us arguing over petty things, blaming each other for all we didn’t do. I close my eyes and hear how we scream at each other. I watch myself packing up my things, moving to an apartment. I discover incriminating letters and overhear compromising conversations. You do the same. We fight in court. You tell me you don’t love me anymore. I wake up one morning and discover I don’t love you anymore. We stop sending flowers, we stop kissing, we stop touching. We tell our friends how it was all a mistake, how we should had gone with our first hunch and just end it right when it started. Or you die. Or I die. Or one of us kills the other in a rage or in an accident. Maybe you meet the real love of your life and realize this was all some sort of training. Or maybe I do. We break up in letters, over the phone, face to face, using sign language, in drawing. We remain friends. We become enemies. We don’t see each other ever again.


And then you open the door. I’m lying on the coach, holding a cigarette end with two fingers. My eyes are blank. I’m living all the bad things that could happen to us so they will never do. I’m trying to keep them away from us. I’m choosing to suffer for both so we both never suffer. And then you are back. I would run to you, but I’m exhausted. I look at you and smile. You say I love you, and with what’s left of my strength I hold you tight.