I Am Done Waiting for You

I knew I shouldn’t have expected much from you. I knew that anything between us, any maybes that could have morphed into somethings, were ancient history. Each attempt to dredge them up was nothing more than a hand scraping the bottom of a murky pool, feeling for a key dropped years ago. I knew you were a long shot at best.

Now here’s a secret: I am a little bit fractured. Nobody will have quite the full story, and you won’t either. I have doled out pieces of my jigsaw self, but none in the right order, and never enough to make a whole. I thought that when you came back, I would be able to stop. Instead I continue to splinter and now I keep the pieces for myself.

I have made all the classic mistakes with everything that concerns you, and so I have given you all the usual allowances. I have made excuses for you that make my friends roll their eyes and curse you out, and then backtrack to find diplomatic ways of telling me that you’re a shithead. I still don’t know if that’s true, but survey says yes.

I am not patient or nonchalant, but I can pretend. I filed my nails on things you told me, and when your words dissolved, quiet and complete as a drop in water, I dug them into my skin of my palm. Rubbing away the redness was not so difficult. I am well-practiced, now, at pretending to be patient and nonchalant.

But patience is my virtue that enables your vice, and I don’t want to be patient anymore.

 Anonymous

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