They Booked the Trip Without Me

i found out from a story. not a text, not a heads up, a little ten-second video of the four of them at the airport, coffees up, captioned with the dates. a trip. the trip we used to all take. i wasn't in the picture and i wasn't in the plan.

so now it's 2am and i'm wide awake building the calmest, most devastating message in the history of the english language. i've written it eleven times. it's so reasonable. it's so light. hey, looks fun, didn't realize that was happening, no worries at all, every word a tiny blade wrapped in cotton. i can see exactly how it'll land. i can see her reading it and feeling the floor tilt.

i'm not going to send it. obviously. i never send it. i lie here and let the perfect cruel version of me write paragraphs i'd be ashamed of by daylight, and it feels, for about an hour, incredible.

then the airport story expires off the top of the screen the way they do at the 24-hour mark, just gone, and somehow that's the part that gets me.

they didn't even keep it up long enough for me to be hurt on purpose. i did all of this to myself.