Trial separation. Like we’re trying out for some team, like we intended to work our way up to a full separation. Yay! Will we make it? What a vapid way to twist a knife in my back. Your intent, always caught in the wrinkles of your nose, screamed louder than the smoky blue eyes that always used to smooth the creases in my heart. “I am better than you,” they say, “but hold on there, because I might come back, depending on how things work out.”
Things won’t work out. They never do. That cancerous burn in your heart etches your bitterness into the face of the strongest prospective love, taking apart the person, one annoyance at a time. And then you’ll come back, all slushy eyes, practically no wrinkle in your nose, and you’ll slowly wheedle your way back upon me, dampening the noises from the outside world, forcing me to lose faith with my senses, with my sense.

So, let the trials begin; I find myself shift from waiting for the next argument, next painful word, to fearing the phone ring, your husky voice just breaking with the shortest-term emotion. The first time, you had me falling into your arms and it was all of a month before you’d gone again. I swore I’d never take you back, resolved to cut you off, and get on with my life. And yet you have me, by the heart, by my soul. You are my everything, and without you I fade and fail, so every time I return to you, and every time my dignity is whittled away just a little bit more. But that isn’t the quality of love, the texture of loneliness, and so I hang as an unplucked thread, waiting for you to unravel me every time.
It is a tenuous grapevine that connects us, your friends looking down on me even more than you do, but it’s enough to forewarn me of your latest failed romance, to know you are about to rebound right back at me. I have nothing left for you to take. With you I am nothing. This time there will be no return.