The Same Building, Different Footsteps

You didn't seem to care

if I was hurting.

Or maybe you did

and I couldn't see it

through the indifference in your gaze.

Either way,

I was alone.

You got to leave the friendship

without looking over your shoulder

and wondering which piece of it

belonged to you.

I wasn't so lucky.

I apologized.

More than once.

And somewhere along the way

all those apologies

started making me look

like I had confessed

to the whole thing.

Our friends saw the ending.

They didn't see

daily texts become silence

overnight.

They didn't see me

trying to understand

how someone could be part

of the ordinary rhythm of my life

on Tuesday

and practically a stranger

by Wednesday.

You were so focused

on the friendship we had both lost

that I don't think you noticed

there was another one

collapsing right beside it.

Ours.

Maybe you thought

nothing else needed to be said.

I did.

I kept waiting

for one sentence.

One acknowledgment.

Something that said

I wasn't the only person

standing in the wreckage

with fingerprints on it.

Instead,

I kept repairing a bridge

you apparently weren't using,

tightening bolts,

replacing boards,

apologizing for the weather,

while you had already found

another way home.

And then somehow

we found ourselves

in the same quiet building again,

walking the same polished floors

under the same too-bright lights,

only apparently

on a custody arrangement

nobody had bothered

to show me.

I noticed the evenings you came.

I noticed the evenings you didn't.

And yes,

I noticed when yours

never seemed to be mine.

Maybe you avoid my evenings.

Maybe you don't.

I used to turn that question over

like there was a prize underneath it.

There wasn't.

There was just another question.

And I had collected enough of those.

For a while

your distance made me wonder

if I really had been

what your leaving made me feel like:

a problem.

Something requiring patience

you no longer had.

Something inconvenient

taking up space.

Something to drag to the curb

and leave there

for pickup day.

I hated that feeling.

I hated even more

that I let your opinion of me

decide what I thought of myself.

Because I knew

I hadn't been perfect.

I had moments

when hurt got to my mouth

before better words did.

I apologized for those.

I meant it.

But an apology

was never supposed to mean

everything was mine.

It wasn't.

So I quit checking the schedule.

I quit looking for explanations

in hallways

and evenings

and whether our paths

almost crossed.

I quit waiting

for the apology

that apparently wasn't coming.

The bridge is still there.

I don't need to burn it.

I don't need you to cross it.

I don't even need you

to admit there was a bridge.

Turns out

I was never stranded.

I was just standing there

much longer than necessary,

waiting for someone

who had already gone home.

So I finally crossed it myself.

Not because I stopped caring.

Not because none of it hurt.

And not because

I finally figured out

which one of us

was the bad guy.

I crossed because

I got tired of making my life

a waiting room

for someone else's explanation.

I found my way forward

somewhere in those quiet evenings,

one foot

and then another,

until I realized

I wasn't looking behind me anymore.

The bridge is still there.

Maybe it always will be.

But I don't stand on it now.

I have somewhere else to go.