Told me I was miserable when I was getting better
Because I wouldn’t let the gaslighting comments just
Roll.
Off.
My.
Back.

You didn’t understand why they were no longer keeping me warm
When they never kept me warm. At all.

I’d rather be comforted by hell’s embrace!
At least hell is honest with its intentions. 

eight months

eight months.

eight months have flown by.

yet, there’s still midnights where i find myself dialing your number, hoping you’d pick up. my befallen hopes get repeatedly crushed as it goes straight to voicemail.

there’s still midnights where i leave messages, short clipped ones. i tell you about a meme i saw or something a colleague has said that irked me. i tell you my favorite and my least favorite ones from the new album of the band we used to listen to. i tell you about the weather and my plans of moving away. i tell you how much i miss you. i tell you how i want us back.

and there’s midnights where i just listen to the voice on the recording, thinking how your phone must probably be on airplane mode, like how it always used to be when we were still together. when it was still me. when it was still just me.

you’ve never really been fond of calls. you were more of a message type of person. your phone’s probably on airplane mode and you probably have your arms wrapped around her right now, both of you leaning against the headboard, a thin blanket covering your bodies. a horror film’s on the tv, one she picked even though horror’s not really your genre. you don’t even have to reach for your phone and keep declining, and she won’t have to keep on asking you “who was that?” and you won’t have to come up with an excuse that it was from a wrong number.

there’s still midnights where my persistence wins and i redial and redial hoping you’d pick up even just once and we’d make small talk, as if nothing happened and everything’s still normal.

there’s midnights where i hope you’d pick up and your voice would sound like steel and ice and you’d tell me to stop calling, that it’s been eight months since for fuck’s sake and that you never want to hear from me ever again.

to think about it, you never even bothered to block my number. or my social media accounts. you couldn’t even be bothered to give a decent explanation when i found out about her. when i confronted you how it happened. how you met her in the midst of us. how you ended up with her even when i was still in the picture. as if you were just waiting for me to get out of it, both of your lives. like we never even happened to begin with.

there’s still midnights when my hands shake, my phone screen blurry from tears, my head pounding from the countless shots i’ve taken. midnights where i want to ask you “how?”, how you both are alright and happy and over the moon, while here i am, still stuck and miserable, still hopelessly pining for you-it’s all unfair. how you got the guts to fall for her when you claimed you loved me with your unending professions. how you were able to walk away from what we had because you decided it’s her you wanted to be with. how you didn’t even have to move on from me. how all of these, those eight months seem so easy for the both of you. the hangover the morning after’s what makes me realize i did send you the recordings.

i tried to reach you again the midnight after, but the recording said that the number i have dialed has either been disconnected or no longer in service.

i guess you have finally changed your number.

-at least i know my messages reached you.

-caela m.

“harden not your rage.

no, i do not mean forgive and forget,

but let it melt, let it glaze.

let it soften, let it fractalize,

but not into stone so rugged.

maybe something like a pebble,

quaint for a pocket

yet just enough to keep you running.”

-an excerpt

-caela m.