After She Left
I stood there for a long time.
Not crying.
Not moving.
Just listening to the silence of my apartment.
It didn’t feel like closure.
Closure is a neat word people use when they don’t know what else to call the ending of something messy.
This wasn’t closure.
It was recognition.
That some wounds don’t heal neatly.
They just stop bleeding outward.
What I Understand Now
People always ask what I would do if she came back.
I used to imagine dramatic answers.
Forgiveness.
Reunion.
Anger.
But life rarely chooses dramatic answers.
It chooses quiet ones.
The truth is simple:
She left.
I survived.
She returned.
And I had already built a life that no longer needed her permission to exist.
