The Subtle Words of Defiance

by Jason

How do you tell her that you still think of her too often and that you still see her face next to yours on the pillow and you still imagine her next to you and that you don’t like the person that sometimes shows up there now, at least not like you liked her? And how do you tell her that you met this new girl but you think that your initial interest had less to do with attraction than it had to do with the memory of her, the girl who had your soul or so you thought back then? And how do you tell her that you treated her horribly and that you don’t deserve her and that you are still being selfish and that you probably won’t ever be together and that you know that your futures are directing themselves in vastly different directions and you know you can’t control things anymore but that you still think about her fondly? And how do you tell her this when there is someone else who is more suited in so many ways to be there for her and take care of her and treat her well in the ways that you always seemed incapable of? And how do you communicate with her at all besides simply typed generic chat responses that are loaded with unspoken novels of words that you wish you could say instead? And how can you tell her that you are trying so hard to tell her nothing because you are practicing not being selfish just like she always wanted you to do and that even now you are in some strange way doing all of this for her because you want to be perfect and for her to be happy at last but instead you just feel like you are lying to her in every slowly pecked out “ok” on the keyboard? And how do you tell her that you don’t believe in love anymore, just like you didn’t back then, but you realize that somehow love is only something you personally seem to grasp too late after the game has already finished and all the musicians have packed their instruments to return home instead of going down with the sinking ship that was your romance? And how do you tell her anything at all when really all you want to do is block her from the social media portals that loosely tie you together even though you never could quite become the person that she wanted you to be and you wonder if maybe you are in a way running from that unfulfilled dream or if it is the reverse somehow? How do you tell her words or syllables or sentences or a structured cohesion of letters in any language at all? And how do you show her that words mean nothing and that you wish she would never read them but secretly hope that she does and that she does something crazy and irrational and that in the end it makes everything perfect, somehow? And how do you tell her that that only happens in movies and books and your imagination because you know that the words are too cryptic and that the will is to faint and the history is too far in the past and the distance is too great and the money is too little and the hearts are two thick and the pride is too strong and everything is wrong and yet you wonder is it not that way in love? Or is it that way in war? And so you tell her in a way, somehow, that a war is brewing and you have to stay and not tell her anything because your silence is the victory.