3:42 AM

I don’t miss you. But I still think about you. More than I’d like to admit.

And when I do, it starts in the gut, tight, bitter. Something like nostalgia, but meaner. Something that boils, like my body’s building its own protest against your memory.

Every time I think of you, my blood goes hot. I get angry. At you. At me. At the version of me that still lets you live in my head rent-free without so much as a check-in.

I get angry knowing you’re probably out there laughing at something new, forgetting how we ended, how I unraveled silently while you held me like nothing was wrong.

Thanksgiving. The last day we touched. You gripped me like you believed in us. And I held you back knowing I was already slipping away. Knowing this was it.

I think about that grip, how full of hope it felt. How cruel hope can be when it only belongs to one of us.

It’s been what six, seven months? No calls. No fights. No apologies. Except that one you sent too late, when I had already trained myself not to flinch at your name.

I get angry at you for not trying harder. I get angrier at myself for still caring.

Because if I could, I’d check on you. God, I hate that I would. I'd ask how your mom is. If you’re good with your dad again. If you finally picked up the bass. If you found a job that doesn’t drain you. If your new friends are kind to you in the ways I couldn’t be, or maybe in the ways you never let me.

And the worst part? I know you wouldn’t do the same. You haven’t. You didn’t. You don’t.

You didn’t care enough then. You don’t care enough now. And still, here I am. Spilling myself at 3 a.m., not missing you, but still making room for you in a place that should have healed by now.

I don’t miss you. But I remember. And remembering feels like loving someone with a closed fist. Tight. Unwilling to let go, but already empty.