She was as I saw her the last time: confident, so sure of herself that she scared me. She was what I was afraid of, the kind of stability that would only suffocate me.

I should have not taken you away from her. I should not have come between the two of you. She was your soulmate and you, hers. You’re so steady with her like you could face everything together. Unlike us where everything was hot and cold and there’s days I didn’t want you, days I spent with people I thought I loved. I didn’t want you and you felt unwanted, abandoned. 

One look and she said to me, “Of course you’ll be here.” 

What I heard was, “You’ve done enough damage.”

And I imagine you in that bed, alone, where you should not be had you not meet me, probably living your life still, careless and free, alive and not dying. 

She said exactly that.

Just imagine if I stayed away just like she told me off once in a bathroom stall a long long time ago. 

But I loved you, I loved you! How could I stay away?

But she said I could have and you’d still be standing. She was right and I felt my insides crawling leaving, slowly but surely, seeping away like thin smoke. My insides no longer belonged to my body and I was gone for good. 

People talked to me and I heard them faintly but I wasn’t there. 

Jetter asked me what she said to me on our way home but honestly I couldn’t remember anything, I only felt like I should undo me.

I know I wrote once after Camden beat you up, you came to see me. You were sweet and I told you, you’re a Daddy now.

But as I lived on in this side of the story, everything got rotten. You were broken. You didn’t wake up the next day, you didn’t come to see me. 

That night I heard you whimpered I thought I was dreaming but you struggled on your side of the bed, waking me up just to find you sweating and crying.

You started to have these dreams, where you were fighting for breaths in a sea of sludge, you were crawling on legs you could not feel, you were drowning. You struggled to breathe for hours. You were crying and it felt like I broke apart.  

These nightmares were recurring, so I let you drink to fall back to sleep.  

But it’s daylight now, bright and sunny, and you’re drinking again. You have turned into a zombie, but subdued and mute. You sat by the piano, staring at the keys. I wasn’t sure you were really there. You hardly eat. Sleep got you restless. You just sat there, day and night and day. You barely talk to me, as if I too wasn’t really there. 

I didn’t really want to go and left you alone when everything felt unreal to you and you weren’t even there to feel, or to be. But maybe, just maybe, you wanted to be alone.

Maybe, just maybe, the sea of sludge was me.

I hardly hear you, holding back tears like that and you know I wanted you to say it, that I was there for a reason. But the truth was, I couldn’t bear myself to see you like this, every night, and day and night and day. I was exhausted.

You’re so thin, your bones sprouting out of your elbows. Your jaw turned sharp that you looked so different sometimes. I had to convince myself you’re just the same as before your accident.

i have blown a thousand apologies into the air, didn’t you feel them in your breaths when you’re running into the wind? feel me there. feel me in your lungs, in your chest, inhale me into your veins —here’s to every moment i made you bleed. here’s to every pain every sting every stab every scar and every kiss. here’s to everytime i leave with not so much to keep…