I went through your things.

I didn’t tell you, because –

I don’t even know if you would have been angry.

I think I would have been happy if you were angry – because that would mean that you were keeping yourself a mystery to me on purpose. Like you had some deep, dark, potentially worrisome secret lurking behind your absent eyes. I wanted you to be dark, evil, even. I wanted to pretend that was the reason you turned so cold to me.

In the end, I would so much rather face hatred than apathy.

I pulled splinters from my heart every time your dry gaze swept away from me, grating me – did you even realize you were doing it? Do you know how much your silence deafened me?

I found your notebook in a pile of memories and the absence of personality saddens me. Grocery lists and to-do lists are the main occupants, the only thing calling to your memory is the looping handwriting, the penmanship soaked in nostalgia from years’ worth of letters. I flip through, hurt and hot in the face, almost missing a note on the last page. It was one I had written you – worn and crumpled from time, and very carefully taped in place. My name captioned beneath it with a perfectly symmetrical heart.

I hate you. Who do you think you are, even in absence, to cause me tremors in my heart. You always said I was the kind of person who couldn’t do anything halfway, and I’m glad that one of us was that way.

The worst part is that although I see you now, as the approximate half of a human being, I remember when I knew you – all of you. I remember feeling a kinship like family, a melding of minds and hearts and bodies. I remember secrets flowing between us like blood between the chambers of the heart – natural and vital.

I felt your sudden withdrawal like cardiac arrest. When did the shared dome of our consciousness become too constricting to you? We both walked into that room of our own accord. We turned the key together and held hands crossing the threshold. How could you think I wouldn’t notice the chill of your hand before you drew it away? How could I help but feel as you pried the key from between my ribs?

What did I do to deserve this? When did my presence begin to feel like a cancer within you, rather than the light upon your skin? When did my embrace change from warm to scalding?

There was a night I yelled at you, the both of us prickly and worn from the day’s labor. I told you you were selfish and cold. I meant it. I told you I could run away to die without worrying about hurting you. I meant it. You left, face hot from tears.

You came back.

You could have stayed away. I would have understood. I had earned separation from that point – how could I forget how enchanted I was, how blessed my life could be with your company. The moment I saw your face after that I knew I could never let you get away again.

Of course we still fought. We were not perfect like some see perfection. It is not an absence of conflict – it is an endurance of conflict. That is how we obtained perfection.

After that, I followed you when you walked away angry. I didn’t let you simmer in hatred – I broke the locks on your door and made sure you felt the relief of my company. You pushed me away – you didn’t believe you deserved me, my perseverance, but I never let you wallow in self-pity. I held fast to your body in spite of your hands attempting to pry me off.

But god, I know how resilient those feelings of inadequacy are – strong enough to consume you. When your hands proved incapable of removing me, and bolted doors couldn’t keep me away, you turned to the knife – you thought to wedge it between us and split us off, for fear of heaven. I stopped you from making that mistake.

As your hands shook I felt myself steel. The blade bit flesh. The flesh bled. We grew together. Then you were finally gripping me like the lifeline I was, fingers digging into my arm as you sunk to the floor. There was the distant sound of metal against wood as the knife fell, and then I pulled you in, felt the warmth seeping between us. We were one flesh again, like we were meant to be. You shook from sheer relief, mouth to dry, stomach too full of butterflies to speak. When you stilled, I pulled away, rejoicing that you weren’t trying to take flight once again. I kissed your cheek once. Then I set to clean the floor.

I thought, after that catharsis, that we’d be better. I thought we’d be stronger than before. But no – now you’re more absent than ever. Your eyes are glazed over, your mouth still. Your pulse doesn’t race for me like it used to. Those eyes of yours are all white and bulging and cold. Your stiff arms don’t fit my body. Your lips crumble to the touch.

Why won’t you look at me?