I broke up with him over WhatsApp

We don't drink and I have work the next morning but I want you the way fire needs oxygen to be sustained and there's a bottle of bourbon your father got you for your eighteenth birthday.

I can't tell if it's looking like a bad idea because I know... I know that I'm a lightweight and if I have a glass I'll be reminded of the amber colour of your eyes and how we only ever kissed once.


I've been thinking about kissing you every night, but you don't taste the same when I'm feeling vulnerable and you're this pretty picture in my dreams. I'm wanting.

I'm always wanting to be close to you but I never managed because along the lines of university and starting my first real job I developed anxiety that sustains itself through the beating of my dead heart and that means I can't dial your number.

But I've dialed it before and it was a mistake I'm so sorry but the number didn't work anymore and I was relieved. I was horrified.

This thing that tethered me to have known you when we were younger cut me from you and I hate it.

I hate that I still need you so much and now that I'm here with you in a room you swear is yours (but I don't remember you liking the colour green) I can't do anything about myself.

I hate everything about you because I used to like you so much it drove me brain-dribbling out the side of my skull crazy.

I wanted you.

I wanted you and I don't mean to sound like I'm blaming you for breathing oxygen, for being born, but I'm convinced you were put on this orbiting ball of salt water and rock to manipulate me into believing that I've got an obsessive personality when you have no business looking at me like that when these bedroom lights are so dim.

I'm reminded of that time we kissed and I took my nails to your neck as if I were falling and grappling for something to hold onto before I hit the ground then you complained about the red marks that entire week.

And, that entire week, I tried remembering what it had felt like to leave those marks on your neck. On your milk cloud skin.

That when I'm with men I write on their skin that way and they don't complain because for some reason it means I love them now that I'm older but when I was younger with you, you didn't like it.

And I thought I would make them leave me the way it made you but they stay and I have to keep up with them the way I wish I would have to keep up with you when we grew up and grew tired of each other and our families fought every weekend we took the kids to their grandparents.

I don't believe in marriage but, when it comes to you, I believe in staying forever. Forever arguing about nothing and those petty threats that end up with me on the satin sheets in your studio apartment and telling our kids you were my first and all of that disgust and those memories in polaroid photographs and cotton shirts and wondering what if.

But we don't drink and I must have been drunk when I decided it was a good idea to shut myself away from the rest of the party with you in this forever green basement.

When you told me that it was okay.

You were only going to pour for yourself I knew I was going to have too much to drink and my lips would be on yours before we got the second bottle uncorked and I wouldn't know what to do with myself so you'll have to lead the kiss.

But I swear I'm not into you anymore. That it's just my body's reaction to having wanted you for long enough to forget what it felt like to be held like this. And I wanted to be held like this.

I wanted to blame the bourbon and the whiskey and whatever the hell it is you poured into that one glass we shared while you drank and I pretended to take a sip each time I touched the lip of the glass to my mouth but, only, I wanted to taste your saliva so I could know if I still wanted you like when I was a kid.

I found it curious that in this basement bedroom with that humongous bed with those satin sheets from my fantasies of us, we chose to sit on a loveseat in the corner.

That we were closer sitting on the sofa than we would have been on the bed but that doesn't matter anymore because you've laid my hand in your lap and you're telling me I can touch you wherever I want with your whiskey breath and I don't even know if I want you anymore.

But I want something.

And, at that moment, with you so close I couldn't discern between wanting to be there with you and wanting to be with you. But I was with you.

I was finally with you and I didn't know what it was that was making me hesitate. You asked me if it was okay what you were doing with my hand in your lap and I said it was fine because I was too afraid of giving up the moment to my stupid emotions. That I wanted this.

I wanted you.

Only, and I never realized until that moment, that I didn't want you like this because we didn't drink but we had two bottles between the both of us and that meant we were absolutely incoherent. But I needed you lucid. I needed you to feel wanting me the way I felt wanting you.

I'm resigned.

I'm resigned in the manner your hand knows exactly what to do with itself as if we've performed this dance before when we were like this.

Oh God, and I like you.

I like you a lot when you're begun fiddling with the buttons on your collar and you're suggesting we share another glass of whatever is going to make me sick tomorrow morning when I'm supposed to go to work but I can't move because my body is trapped beneath your leg and your arm and my head are somewhere between your pillow and your head and I'd rather call in sick then break the spell.

I'd rather call in sick than break the f*****g spell.

But I'm not drunk.

We don't drink.I saw you today waiting in the same line for the same melting tomato burger as me and you were puberty tall and majestic and all I wanted was for you to recognize me first so I didn't feel so stupid for always being able to find you in a crowd.

A year from now, we'll regret this.

We'll regret having fallen in love with each other and then you breaking up with me and all those girlfriends after me.

And they are the kind of pretty I was convinced our relationship was before you left and lied about not having enough time for relationships.

Then you called eight months later and, naturally, I told you I didn't want to hang out.

That I didn't want to have sex with you and you got really rude over the phone and cursed me in every language you could speak and it was really difficult for me, but I had to block your number because everything inside of me needed to protect the image I had of you.

The image of you made me want to go back to you when you called.

But this is just me venting.

I don't know why people rely on me for anything. You made me feel useless. I feel useless.

What am I supposed to do knowing that I was pretty enough to kiss but not good enough for a second date?

You let me cuddle you in front of our friends and be the territorial b***h I argued I'd never be when we were at work and took me on my first date and broke up with me the day after over WhatsApp.

I broke up with my next boyfriend over WhatsApp.

You taught me to be afraid of confrontation.

To be afraid of things not going my way.

I used him to cleanse myself of all of your demons.