The morning you marry your true love, I will have an ex-boyfriend laughing somewhere because I told him that he was crazy to be jealous of you; but it was always you. It was you before I moved in with him and it was you after I left. It is not still you, but sometimes I do wake up with a pit in my stomach that I call by your name.
The morning you marry your true love, I will be on the phone with a man I have never met, wailing like an unruly child until the sound of my sobs drown out anything comforting he could hope to say.
The morning you marry your true love, I will ball my hands into fists and sink like a worm into the bottom of a bottle of fine silver tequila.
The morning you marry your true love, at least three people will say to me: “I thought you’d let this go already.” I will try to explain that leaving you is something I am still trying to process. I will try to explain that letting go comes in waves. I will try to explain that even when we didn’t appreciate each other anymore, you still felt like my other half. Sometimes you still feel like my other half.
The morning you marry your true love, everything will taste like quiet panic. Like being startled by house-sounds in the dark. Like walking up to the wrong person in public. I will keep trying to picture your hand with someone else’s ring on it.
The morning you marry your true love, I will try to muster up some kind of faith. I will hope that you are making the right choices. I really hope that you are making the right choices. I know I can’t weigh in on them anymore.
The morning you marry your true love, I will block out the memory of you sitting across from me in a cafe on Main Street, with a look on your face that I still don’t have a word for. I will not think about the things that you said. The worry in your eyes that turned my disdain for him into something much more bitter. Today you recognize it only as jealousy. For your sake, I wish it were so simple.
The morning you marry your true love, I will not be able to block out the thought of his mouth on your skin.
The morning you marry your true love, I will have a throat full of regret. I will recall too vividly the day that your fiancé called me up just to gloat, to say that he had won. Like you were a thing to be won. Like there was ever any competition. Like you were not his from the moment he sunk himself into you. I will recall laughing, saying, “you can have her.” Hanging up the phone. The sound of it is ugly. It does not feel like me. It does not sound like me.
Maybe it will be more than a throat full of regret.