I told you to stop calling me,
because we weren’t friends anymore.
I said it through a screen,
late at night,
when courage feels braver behind pixels.

You asked if I meant it.
I said yes.
And that one word
ended six years of orbiting each other.

I met you at a kickback in Sacramento—
Easter eggs filled with party favors,
music low, laughter high.
You were magnetic,
and I didn’t know why you looked at me like that,
but I liked it.
We did our dance—
a clumsy, electric kind of rhythm—
and for the one year you lived in California,
we tried.
It was messy, uneven,
but it was real.

Then you moved away,
like you said you would.
You were chasing your future;
I was trying to understand mine.
Our time came with an expiration date,
but somehow the feeling didn’t.

We kept in touch.
I never stopped loving you—
not fully, not honestly.
You became my hyperfixation,
my late-night thought,
my almost.
We both dated others,
but you always called.
And every call pulled me back
to the version of us that still believed in timing.

I was twenty-three when I met you.
Twenty-nine when I finally let go.

Why let go of something
that still makes my chest ache
when I hear your name?

Because you called me “friend”
but never showed up.
Because you wanted to remember,
not rebuild.
Because each time you dialed my number
and reminisced about when we were in love,
I bled from the same wound you kept tracing.

You didn’t mean to hurt me.
You just needed comfort.
But I needed peace.

So I hung up on the ghost of what we were,
and I stopped answering.

Now I’m thirty.
You’re still only a phone call away.
And I wonder—
is this what healing sounds like?
The silence after a six-year echo?

Maybe this is better.
Maybe goodbye, for a second time, was the kindest thing
either of us ever did.