A Year of Stories (Collection Two)

The Text Said, "I'm Leaving."

I did it by text, not even a good text, it said, "I'm leaving."

I thought that was everything left to say – we had been over the rest a thousand times, a dozen broken lamps times, enough times that my therapist can recite my rants by rote.

The text said, "I'm leaving," because there was more power in those words than I'd shown in five years. They were direct, directed, words bound in iron and sinew – words like an arrow through the heart of the matter.

And the matter, that matter, was that we were poison – drops of arsenic on each other's lips, on each other's tongues – dram after dram of dark death that we drank down for years.

The text said, "I'm leaving," to where, I didn't know. Everything I have, we have, our lives are tied together by hangman's rope, the more I pull away, the tighter the loop.

The house is in your name, the cars are in mine, we share the friends on most days, but I know they'd choose sides – I fear they'd choose sides, and when they do – when you make them, what will I have left but the shadow of a life I never really lived?

The text said, "I'm leaving," and I meant it, I really did. It took an hour to write, an hour to edit, an hour to stare at – dry eye'd, finger hovering over finality.

But I never hit send, did I? I never do. Its been a year since I last tried, that text still saved on my phone, in the graveyard on my phone, with so many others. I look it sometimes and wonder about the lives I could have lived, the fact I could lived.

Perhaps, it's time to try again...