Page 198 of The Lies We Play

Too . . . bare. It’s a lot like standing in front of him with my ribs pried open and saying, Look. See what you left behind. See what I turned into while you were gone.

So, of course, I delete.

I try again.

Florence is dark already.

Which I’m aware makes no sense. It is morning. Sunlight is spills across the floor. A woman on a balcony across the street is watering geraniums in a silk robe, as if she was born for a perfume ad. A tourist is laughing below, too loud and too free.

I'm not, this morning, in the business of writing tragic little poems to a man who might have abandoned me ten years ago.

“Might have” is the key phrase.

Today, I delete it.

Then I sit there with my thumb hovering above the screen, and there it is again.

That tiny, poisonous mercy.

Might have means there is room for a story. For an explanation. For a door, I swore I sealed it with every scar he left behind. It means my anger has to share a room with hope, which feels unfair, frankly, since anger is at least honest enough to arrive with a knife and not flowers.

Bella twitches once in my left wrist.

Not panic.

Recognition.

I look down at my hand. My fingers are still mine. The tremor is small today. Almost polite, which is suspicious. Bella is never polite unless she is preparing to humiliate me later in public, preferably near glassware, hot coffee, or a man with excellent tailoring and catastrophic emotional availability.

“I see you,” I murmur.

For ten years, I have spoken to this tremor like it is a puppy I adopted the moment we met. As if it is not my body betraying me, but my body telling the truth before I have the nerve to say it out loud.

“Yes,” I add under my breath. “I know. We are going to have a day.”

Bella settles.

At least one of us can chill sometimes. Lucky her.

I look back at the message field.

My thumb moves before I decide anything.

I’m here.

Two words.

Small enough to survive.

Large enough to ruin me.

I stare at them until the screen dims, until the black glass throws my face back at me. I look tired. Older than I feel, younger than I should after everything. My hair is knotted at my nape. There is a crease from the pillow on one cheek. My mouth looks like it forgot how to be kissed and is deeply offended by the neglect.

I don't send the message.

Not yet.

Still, I wrote it.