The Blood & The Bones

The depth of my love for you, littlest one… You could fill canyons and valleys and oceans and rivers and the universe with the love I have for you and have it be overflowing into the stars and waves and currents and dirt of this earth. And because I love you this much, I do what will make your heart the fullest.

I love you so much that I forgave the man who made half of you of all that he did to me just to see you smile at the sight of your two favorite people in one room together. And I love you so much that I watch him love her in the way that he used to love me just to keep making family memories. For you, my love. For you.

And I tell everyone I’m fine but I’m not. I’ll never be fine.

Do I want a life with him? No. But, do I wish I’d been good enough to inspire him to be the man he is for her? Yes. Maybe I’ll never understand it. Maybe I’m not meant to. But, watching them tonight in what used to be our home surrounded by things that used to be mine woven into things I know are hers was too much to bear.

And as I watched you sing happy birthday to your father knowing you’d only get an hour with him before their plans began and sitting at a table in a seat that was mine then and is now hers… my heart shattered. It shattered in a way that makes it impossible to be reconstructed. And if it is, if anyone ever dares to try, they’ll never find all the pieces anyway. I will never again be whole.

And so I left. Because the tears were barely able to stay at the corners of my eyes. They were threatening to fall and so I had to leave. I had to run. I hugged your father. I hugged him hard and then I ran.

I just felt like a failure. Like I failed you. Like I could’ve done better to keep us all together. I’m so sorry, my darling. I’m so sorry for the life you won’t have. For the nights you go to sleep under a roof in a home where only half your heart exists.

I’m so sorry for what you’ll miss. For what he’ll miss. For the times you’ll feel pulled in two directions never understanding why we couldn’t have just worked it out. For letting hurt sour my heart and steal my love for him. For letting lies and hate push us to the farthest corners of the earth with a divide too wide to ever bridge no matter how much I still loved him. How much I still do.

I’m so sorry we did that to you. I’m sorry I did that to you. I’ll never forgive myself for what I took from you and I understand if you don’t either.

But he didn’t love me anymore because of what I’d become and so I had no choice. I had no choice. I couldn’t go back. I didn’t know how. And I’m sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know.

LL.