All the text messages I've never sent

What wasted unconditional love

On somebody who doesn't believe in the stuff

Oh, well.

--

In this pandemic how comforting it would be to have your hand in mine. I am very sad and sometimes frightened, but I'm not going to let it destroy me.

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Logged into fascist Facebook and assaulted with other people's memories I was pictured in, we were pictured in radiating happiness. Unbidden tears fell in my cubicle, at the center of my open-plan newsroom. Someday, somewhere, I'll have an office where I can cry at work in peace.

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Querido ex cariño,
On this day last year you sent me a digital valentine, a picture of a pair of chimps asking me to be your prime-mate. I was surprised and delighted. You always made me laugh, but you made me cry a lot, too. That day, I did both. Two years ago on this day I bought a new dress and took the time to blow dry my hair. I booked us dinner at an Italian place in Brooklyn. I made you walk with me across the promenade while a relentless cold rain fell. You didn't laugh, you didn't take my hand. You hardly spoke. All I really remember is you saying how tired you were, and the feeling of disappointment mixed with despair in the pit of my stomach, dreading the end of our love story. How did I stand it? Why did I stand it? Because of the valentine you sent the following year with the chimps, because some glimmer of lightness remained.

--
Well. You hope I'm well.

I'm still hurting, and worry a little that I always will. That the pain has exploded and splintered into a million shards that I'll continue to find lodged under and in soft spaces many years from now. Otherwise, I'm very well. I'm sorry that I can't ask after you, I can't even look at a picture of you, but to know anything at all about you somehow is still too much to bear.

--
Hey,
Have you heard Dave? So good. Won the Mercury Prize at only 21. Does that make you proud or sad, thinking of lost opportunities? I take back what I said about British hip-hop. I shouldn't have been so dismissive. Ironically I'm listening to more of it, as well as grime. Have you seen the latest season of Top Boy? Brilliant. And listened to Little Simz? I can't help but think of you in London. Do you remember when I asked you what had been the best thing I'd introduced you to in this world, and you said, without a moment's hesitation, cats? You asked me back and I don't remember what I said, but now I know that it's Britain. You took me from an everyday anglophile through castles, Edwardian jails, Hadrian's Wall, to someone who knows something about the place. You introduced me to proper cheese and proper biscuits. I learned from you just how good a bacon butty with brown sauce can be. You showed me so many corners of your city, from the Thames Path to the book stalls outside National Theatre, to St. John's Bread and the galleries of Brixton. I thank you for all of that. It's changed me forever, it and you.

--

Hi,

I dreamed about you again. Again, I was trying to persuade you that all was well. Again, you were mute and implacable. Have I forgotten the sound of your voice? It once didn't seem possible. None of this once seemed possible. And yet my subconscious, like a ghost hunter in some dickensian nightmare, still seeks you out. Farewell for now. Like I always used to say, when you were on the other side of the world but also the other end of a VoIP call, and not the other side of a life that has ended: see you in my dreams.

--

Dear X,

Happy birthday. I hope you are happy this year. I remember that photo you forwarded me last year of you hunched awkwardly over the 36 long-stem red roses I had sent, one for each year you'd been alive. You looked ghastly and green, positively sick. That's okay. Love can wither. I imagine you this year staying up late with your family, drinking Bordeaux and playing games. You look happy in my mind. Not like two years ago, when I tried to organize a perfect day for you, replete with boozy brunch and minigolf and your favorite cake, but we fell out in the end after I suggested we cap off the night with dancing. You preferred board games, and accused me of not knowing you at all. Now, I suspect, it's true.

Formerly Yours