the longer we go without speaking, the tighter this feeling of uncertainty becomes. it’s this pressure i feel, this “i’m gonna need to say the exact perfect thing to you when we finally meet again, or you won't want me back in your life.”

it’s precarious and i’m exhausted. i'm tired of curation and perfection. because i'm not perfect. and neither are you. and neither is this cruel fucking world we live in, and it would be stupid for me to entertain anything otherwise. my brain is a mess, and words never really capture the full picture, anyways.

and i'm not inside your brain, so i don't know what the perfect thing to say to you is right now. all i know is how i feel and it’s sorry. guilty. regretful. disheveled. uprooted. exposed. vulnerable. i feel angry. fearful. helpless. broken. vicious. destructive. small.

but i can beg the universe to forgive me as much as i want and nothing will change until it decides it will. time travel isn’t real and i can’t undo what i did. i don't want this story to end but i don’t know how else to fix it. and i’ll be stuck like this forever until reconciliation day finally comes, if it even does at all. so all i can do until that fateful maybe-day reaches me is curate these unknowing words. these nonconsentual words. it’s all i have anymore. it’s all i know how to do.