The Look

The television was on
but neither of us were watching it.
Some late-night programme
filling the silence for us.

Curtains closed.
Her bedroom lit blue at the edges
by whatever was flickering across the screen.

I was sitting on the side of the bed.
She was further back against the wall,
knees slightly raised beneath the duvet,
already further away from me
than I understood at the time.

I tried to kiss her.
Or maybe start something more than that.
I only remember her pulling back slightly
and me noticing it immediately.

What’s wrong?

She didn’t answer straight away.
Just looked down for a second
like she was searching for the least painful version
of what she had already decided to say.

Then she told me
she didn’t think she wanted this anymore.
That something between us
had stopped moving forward.

I don’t remember my exact words after that.
Only the feeling.
Like something collapsing inward inside me.

Everything became noise.
The television.
My thoughts.
My voice.
Especially my voice.

I kept talking.
Trying to force the night backwards somehow.
As if panic
could still save me.

I remember saying cruel things
simply because I needed her
to hurt as much as I did.

That’s the part that still shames me.
The speed of it.
How quickly love, fear and humiliation
became the same thing.

Because even while I was speaking,
some part of me knew
I was throwing whole glasses
at the walls of us
just to hear something break
louder than I was.

Then her face changed.
Quietly.
Like she realised
she was no longer speaking
to the version of me she knew.

And once somebody sees you clearly like that,
you cannot ask them to forget it.

The strange thing is,
I still thought I was the victim
when I walked out of the house.

I sat in my car afterwards
shaking so hard
I could barely get the key into the ignition.

At one set of traffic lights
I remember looking into the car beside me
wondering how somebody else
could just be listening to the radio normally
while my entire world had come apart.

But years later,
that’s not the part that stays with me.
Not really.

What stays
is the moment somebody who loved me
realised they might not be safe
inside my sadness anymore.