One Hundred and Seventy Six

I remember this one time.
Walking home from the metro, a chilly rainfall aftermath. It was such a cold night. It had been a grey, grey afternoon, and a dingy, bleak night.

shaking fingers
hesitant breaths
one call
two call
three

It takes me three phone calls to finally get out what I want to say. What I really want to say. I want to say a lot more. I want to say something ungentlemanly. I want to yell. I want to swear. I want to drink. I want to say a lot of other things. But instead I say what I know I should. I say the truth, cos the truth is all that matters. "At the end of the day, I don't have you. I don't have a right to feel this, any of this; you're not mine, and I don't have you."

It is terrible. And I have never said it aloud to myself. Whispered it in dreams, written it, wondered it, yelled it at the top of my lungs tonight, but never have I said it, heard it, felt the words on my tongue. They are bitter, and they taste of jealousy and failure.

"You don't think you have me?" You say, instead of an apology. Instead of an accusation. Instead of an explanation or hang up or anything else rational or irrational, anything I could have prepared myself with, you instead answer with a question, a rhetorical one. Out of everything in the world you could have said, you choose to say "You don't think you have me?" in such a hurt voice. Then; "Not even a little?" with the kindest hitch in your throat I feel myself shrink down to the size of a pebble, like a fool, like a fool so stuck in my own world, like you must be kidding and it isn't funny, like how could I not know this, don't I know that, don't I know this, haven't you been paying attention to anything that's been happening, don't I know?

Then

in the softest of voices

so soft I imagine I hear it
but you say it
you say
"Not even more?"

I remember
pushing the phone away from my ear and mouth
just for a moment
just to swallow something in my throat
just to stop a clenching in my chest
I fail at both

I remember
i couldn't walk.
I just stood.
shaking fingers
hesitant breaths