Dear Shelton, 

The first sentence was the hardest. The blinking cursor waited patiently as I stared at the blank screen, building up the courage to type your name. So far you have just been the anonymous ‘Lover’ in front of whom I’ve been stubbornly refusing to place the ‘ex’. This isn’t the first letter I’ve written you; this isn’t the first letter you will not receive, either. I’m plagiarising my own thoughts here to give them some semblance of coherence.

I’m not okay. It’s been months since you left me (I count the days still, for what purpose I do not know, this isn’t the rabbit hole I want to wander down). I still have that recurring dream where I’m drowning in a tumultuous green sea, reaching out to you at the shore but you cannot hear me. Apparently green is the colour of your heart. I still wake up crying in the middle of the night. My friends are very rational, something I used to be, they analyse and dissect the frog of my feelings and offer the age old wisdom, “Time heals all wounds.” I’m afraid time’s inexorable passage has done nothing to dull the pain. Sometimes the hurt is staggering; sometimes I have to just stop because my bones feel like old ruins crumbling atop an abandoned hill covered with history’s muddy footprints. 

Remember how I said I will forever try to re-enact ‘us’? You’re still the smile I search on the faces of men who came after. Remember that time in that hotel room, tucked away in London’s back streets and Andy Allo’s song ‘This Bed’ came on and you smiled when she started singing, “Is it too soon to tell you I love you?” I swore then if I were to blow that smile like dandelions in the wind, all the wishes in the world would come true. I’ve been on my knees praying to a God I don’t believe in, asking for some kind of vision, but mine never did come true. There are no more candles left to blow out.

I go out on dates and flirt and act nonchalant and indifferent as if I’ve written you off as a regret to be realised after a drunken night out. Well, I don’t drink. And I don’t believe in regrets. We were perfect. We are perfect. I’ve told everyone I’m over you. I lied. I would still drop the world if it meant we had any chance. Is that pathetic?

I fear I will eventually lead a happy, fulfilling life, but. You’ve got an irretrievable part of me now, whether you want it or not, and I will never be able to love again. I said I will fall in love again. I lied. I just wanted to see whether you cared. You don’t. I know you don’t love me and I feel so angry with myself for being so disbelieving. If we hadn’t unraveled each other during those long nights, shared our atoms until we were one, made love to each other’s thoughts, maybe then it would have been easier. I could believe you when you tell me you don’t love me.

When I was with you everything within me was illuminated. I felt like I had swallowed the sun. Now I’m all burnt inside out and I don’t know how to go on. I don’t have the strength to do this. I miss you like my left arm lost in a war. The phantom limb. You’ve turned into the ghost that rattles behind the closed doors of my mind.

I write poetry about you still. I promised I would never put pen to paper again if it meant I could have you. Now it’s all I have left.

She’s not good enough for you. I defy you to find the same happiness with her that you did with me. I want you to be happy. More than anything in this world. 

You think I’m being dramatic. I guess you never did understand. Heartbreak is terminal.

Me, age 24