I Think I’m Finally Clean From You

There are no more words.

I never thought I’d see the day.

I thought I would fill up journal upon journal and write manuscripts that would topple over, pages scattering and littering my floor all because of you. I’d wear out computers, my fingers would have calluses from the pencils and pens. I thought I could write the real ‘never ending story’ all because of you and me and what we were and what we weren’t.

But I’m sitting here, with a blank page and a bright screen glaring back at me, trying to write about you and there’s nothing. Nothing comes to mind. Where there should be a stiff and angry sore on my finger from dwelling and penning non-stop there’s just smooth skin, and nails I no longer bite out of stress and worrying that you’d come back.

There’s no journal with your name on it and no pages with our story collecting dust and housing themselves in my world.

There are no more words.

The day you left I tried to purge everything that could have possibly held some shred of you. I sat among shirts and movies, jewelry and plants. All of it felt like it was breathing at me, staring at me, and permanently staining me with the remnants of you. I was convinced if I threw it all away, shoved it in leftover grocery bags and left it on your porch that I would be free.

That I would be clean.

But I wasn’t.

For years you were the ghost around every corner, the heartbeat I could always hear. I saw you in dust patterns on the kitchen floor and in the smears on the window and try as I might to scrub you away a week later, there you’d be. I sat in showers too hot to handle breathing in the steam and wishing. But despite waiting until my skin was raw and red you were the mark on my chest that was unfortunately permanent and now part of me.

So I wrote you down.

I purged myself of you by turning you into metaphors and similes. I tagged you with things like “exes” and “heartbreak” and made no apologies for telling the world my side of the story. I typed word after word, paragraph after paragraph, and I was sure you’d be my War and Peace and everyone would complain about the length.

I thought you would never end, but now there are no more words.

I made you a story, and now I’m writing the epilogue.

I’m sitting here, staring at a blank screen, trying to write about you, and nothing comes to mind. There’s a blinking bar begging me to type, but asking me air my dirty laundry some more, but there’s no urge and I think I’ve said all there is to say.

I used to see you in the dishes piling in the sink, in the puddles that collect on my balcony during the rain, but now the moments when you cross my mind are few and far between. I used to be convinced that you would be my always, but now I know you were just my once. I used to be weighed down and cluttered with your memory, but now you’re just a chapter that is long finished.

I thought once you would stain me forever, but now I know that I am clean.

There are no more words left to write, no more journals to ink with your name.

There’s only one more word.

Goodbye.