# A Letter To My Ex I haven't written you in three years. Not because I forgot how — the muscle memory lives on, stubborn as scar tissue — but because I didn't know what to say. What do you tell someone who once held the map to your interior landscape? Today, I found your old sweater in a box. The grey one. You left it behind like you left everything else: without ceremony, without the mercy of explanation. I held it to my face and breathed in, foolishly expecting ghosts. There was only the smell of old wool and mothballs, the mustiness of time doing its work. I'm not writing this to hurt you. That bridge burned so completely there's no ash left to scatter. I'm writing because silence has its own weight, and I've been carrying it long enough. You were the kind of beautiful that made people nervous — not because of your face, but because of the way you moved through the world like you were asking it difficult questions. You never seemed to need anyone, which is precisely why everyone needed you. I understand now that I was in love with the myth of you more than the person. You were a story I was desperate to finish reading, even as you were walking away from the pages. We were fire that looked like warmth. We burned through things — time, trust, the patient small kindnesses that hold a life together. You said you didn't believe in forever. I said I did. We were both right, and that's what made it impossible. I've stopped waiting for the apology that will never come. I've stopped rearranging the furniture of our history trying to make it look different, more bearable. Some love stories don't have morals. They're just the things that happen to us when we're young and raw and convinced that intensity equals meaning. I hope you're happy. I mean that without reservation now. The bitterness has finally oxidized into something like acceptance. You were never meant to be mine. You were meant to be the person who taught me that some people are experiences, not destinations. That some chapters close not because they failed, but because they were always only meant to be chapters. Your sweater is going to Goodwill tomorrow. I'm done keeping things for the ghost of what we were. I'm finally letting go.

Have you met a woman?…The one who swallows you whole? The one who is the reason for the surrounding silence, even if you are in the noisiest crowd? The same one that will make your heart beat in places you never knew you might feel? Clear. Clearly. Definitely.

And the world is becoming different. And the air is sweet, and tastes like cinnamon cappuccino with a little more coffee-bean? Hey, for taste! You watch the bubbles of its foam burst slightly at the edges of her lips. Yes, this is the corner you want to kiss first, and then rub the foam...long, long enough for the world to forget to spin...or not...It will spin dizzily like the fairy-wheel of your childhood.

My God! It was a long time ago! Now you are drowning in sleep in the lakes with both eyes, and your hair has a scent...on it! You want them to have your scent, to sink into this waterfall...and her moan, when you hug her to merge with yours. In a dream. At least in my sleep.

Have you had such a woman?...Among those who make your senses change their purpose? You see her with your heart. And you hear it with your soul. And she sings in her footsteps. Time stops because it has no power over such a woman. She may be at the beginning of her maturity and with the same success she could be mature. Does not matter. It's as sweet as that cinnamon cappuccino...You drank it. Remember?! That night, when the moon was whole and the autumn leaves were the garment of the earth...or it was summer, hot and sultry---like her?

Has such a woman cried for you? From those who know the price of a tear. And they can send it to you in a letter...the words cry with you and instead of you. Together with her.

Have you listened to such a woman in your arms? From those who hear your day? Her day is your day because you are in it. Nothing else matters...Only the night when her fingers lightly describe your profile...they stop at your lips...your eyelids twitch and her eyes are closed...Because she sees with her hands and knows with her heart you are...And her lips...her lips are like water that flows all over your body...and in your soul...

Did such a Woman leave you?! Tell me, did she leave?...It's not about her. It's about you. For the moment when you walk alone on the street and someone's voice breaks the mirror of silence. Her voice...God! No!...it looks like hers...and you remember the street, the autumn leaves, the light breeze and her hand in yours. You don't remember what she told you...you remember the rumble of words...and how happy she was...You walk back in the footsteps of Time...there that jewel in the window looks so much like hers. The aroma of coffee...and her perfume...

And you have a future in the past to leaf through the layers of words…and you have a piece of time equal to the rest of a life, to remember…

Smile…You had her…and she’s gone…