you were never really there.

it was the day when i showed you the abandoned building in my hometown, the infamous one from which many stories have stemmed about what happened to the families who once lived there. it was drizzling, and we were standing side by side, your left hand holding the umbrella and your other arm wrapped around my back. 

“look at that room over there,” i pointed at the balcony with a sliding door made of glass in the third floor. “people said she was still there.”

“and who is she?”

“the daughter who ignited the fire, the one who didn’t survive.”

you pulled your arms off of me, and looked away.

“let’s just go home.” you said, as you turned back and headed towards the car. 

i stood there silently, rooted in the same spot i stood on several years ago, feeling the soft rain slowly fell over me. 

07.26.2020

I couldn’t recollect how it began nor how it ended. But, it’s still vivid in my mind how our outstretching arms were always reaching out for each other’s; how we’re good at pulling them back when they’re a touch away. Always close, but never close enough to taste each other’s skin. I remembered how intoxicated you were by heartbreak, that I became a perfect illusion of someone you could adore. An object of infatuation. It was delighting, the way you romanticized superficiality that I featured. In your eyes I could saw a veneered version of myself that I, too, would desire. If only you cared a little to peel off a bit of it, would you let reality crush you or feigned blind and deaf instead?