All the things you need to know and refuse to see.

Here's the thing. When I met you, I didn't love you, the same way I didn't love him when I met him. It doesn't work like that, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that everything is destiny. I'm not saying that everything is cosmically important. What I'm saying is that I can't love you—and it isn;t because of him. It's because of me and how I work and what I need. But mostly, it's because of you.

I'm telling you that there's a difference between where we are and where we should be.

There was beauty in your brokenness on the night we first collided. There was mystery in between the tremor in your voice and a space for sympathy in the tiredness resting in your eyes. But the deeper I dug into the gaps in your skin, the more I learned that the space inside was made up of walls and metal spikes—defense mechanisms I hadn't known were there, and that you had no intention of letting go.

You have a habit of closing in around me like a box, like you're trying to keep me within reach, and the inside of that box is painted with all my favorite colors and all my favorite words. But they don't mean a damn thing.

I should have stayed away the first time I left, but you called me back at my weakest, and I went, because I had nowhere else to go. Because I guess I thought I owed you.

But I don't owe you, because you never gave me anything I needed. You sing your flaws from rooftops as long as it will tie me closer to you with tattered strings of pity and guilt for breaking you.

Here's the thing: I'm not breaking you. I'm trying to separate myself from what you want from me. I am trying to unstick your eyes from my body. I'm trying to get the smell of your alcohol breath off of my lips.

Nobody deserves to feel trapped around another person, and while I may not like myself, even I know when to run.

You sealed my choice when you ignored my voice in your face, shouting no.

I am more than gone, and I refuse to say I'm sorry.