# Fake Farewell I'm going away, I told you, packing my suitcase with lies— each fold a promise I wouldn't keep, each corner stuffed with departure. You believed me. You stood at the door like a woman in a black-and-white film, hand raised, eyes already wet, rehearsing the art of goodbye. But I never left. I merely turned the light off in one room and turned it on in another, stayed behind the wallpaper, in the space between your breathing, in the pause before you call my name. I'm still here—in the coffee cup you won't wash, the chair where I sat, the air that remembers the shape of my voice. You think you're mourning. I think I'm being kind. This farewell is a magic trick: I disappear, but the shadow stays behind, grows darker, teaches you how to miss me better than if I'd actually gone. You get to keep the love without the mess of living. I get to keep my freedom without the guilt of taking it. We both get to be noble— you in your grief, me in my mercy. Tonight you'll find a note in your coat pocket, unsigned. It will say nothing. You'll read it a thousand times.