To you, 

I’m afraid to tell you that I’m still hurt. And I’m afraid to tell you that I’m still angry, that you broke my trust, and that you’ve been so unkind and much too hard on me. Instead, I’m pretending - like you - that I never told you I loved you, because I’m also afraid to tell you that I still do.

Love should be told with love, and without shame, or regret, or bitterness. Love would be a story that grows in the telling. It doesn’t always work out that way, though, and it didn’t. From me to you, I’m not sure now that it ever could, not after everything that’s been told in between. These chapters are ragged and torn, their fragile words censored by a reckless and inelegant hand, and this ending is a sad one.

You’ve left me ruined and scarred, my tenderest disclosure paid in welts that tell now only of longing and its submission, while you talk of love as though it were something you know, and not a woman, weeping and unheard and afraid in front of you.

From me, age 31