What We Never Talked About

I think we should talk. I know you’ve put up a guardrail around your heart that fences in your words — or at least the ones you share with me — but there was a short period of time when we talked, we talked, we talked, and it wasn’t hard or terrible or awkward. It was just us, alone in your bedroom, incredulous when we learned we weren’t actually alone at all.

I think we should talk about all the times we kissed and all the mornings I woke up in your bed, flushed and exhilarated from the night before, relaxed and comfortable like I belonged there. There were mornings when you kissed me hard and whispered goodbye, just after dawn, and headed into work while I lay alone under your covers, still reveling in you and the fact that there was any sort of us, surprised every time. But we never really talked about it, even as it was happening.

I think we should talk about all the nervous, butterfly-laden texts we sent, hinting at what it might be like if we had more time together. When secrets were secrets and real life hadn’t yet factored in, when we were able to be honest, to be vulnerable, to be alive, and we didn’t feel any guilt about it. I wonder if the guilt is what’s standing between us now, but I can’t tell because we haven’t talked about it, and it’s so late now that we probably never will.

I think we should talk about all the things we did, in life and in bed, and all the moments we shared and all the feelings we know we had. “You don’t know me,” I joked, months later, but you countered me, all straight in the face and unwilling to take it any further, “Yes, I do.” Yes, you do, but you’ve made it clear that you don’t want to talk to me about it — about me, about you, about us — so what does it matter?

I think we should talk about what it feels like to worry that it was all in my head, that the moments and the emotions were figments of an overactive and overly emotional imagination. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I made it up. I must’ve, right? The way we never speak of it, never acknowledge it, never let on that we both know there was more. There’s nothing to say about something that never existed.

I think we should talk about how I can’t talk to you anymore, how I wasted all my chances to raise big questions. I’ve forgotten how to act around you, somehow, and these days, my mouth doesn’t work when we’re together. I can only manage to say the most ridiculous, frivolous, poorly-worded things, things that don’t make sense and don’t matter, and all the important parts gets stuck in a mental filter that’s working overtime. I don’t know how to talk, even if you’d respond.

I think we shouldn’t talk at all. That’s what you want, isn’t it? And I’ve gotten used to it by now, anyway, after all this time spent silent. I won’t bubble over anymore, won’t spit out the questions I’m too full to contain, because I can’t risk opening myself up like this again. You’ve taught me how to live inside my own head, how to live with a broken heart when I didn’t realize that my heart was available for the breaking.

You’ve taught me to stop talking.

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