There’s a sobering kind of clarity that comes when you finally admit to yourself that you weren’t in love with the person… you were in love with the potential of them.

That was you, Dean.
A character I built up in my mind.
A version of you that never existed, because if it did?
We’d be together.
We’d be living together, building a life together
not strangers orbiting each other’s memories.

But instead, I was just your rebellion.
Your breath of fresh air when home life got suffocating.
Your playground to explore the darker sides of yourself that you couldn’t admit you wanted.

But you couldn’t sustain it.
You couldn’t sustain me.
You gave me half versions of yourself, stiff and withholding.
You were magnetic over the phone,
your voice dripping in tension,
in words that felt like rope around my waist.

But in person?
You were a ghost in a body.
A stiff board.
A man I had to pry feelings out of,
like trying to extract blood from stone.

And sure, there was that one time.
That one time when I was on top, riding you,
when the air between us thickened
and for a fleeting second it felt like we existed in a world only we could feel.
But it was just a flash. A blip.

Every other time?
I was just a body for you to get off in.
A placeholder for your curiosity.

Meanwhile, here I am with this new person.
He’s not perfect.
Emotionally, he’s unstable, messy even.
But he’s here.

He touches me like he means it.
Grabs me.
Kisses me like he wants to consume me.
He doesn’t need a 9 hour drive or a planned trip just to show up
and fuck me with presence.

He’s not a shadow.
He’s flesh and blood and heat.

You?
You were just a story I kept re reading, hoping the ending would change.
But I’ve read it enough times to know better.

And maybe that’s why you keep showing up in my signs,
in my dreams,
in the echoes of my waking moments.

Because you know it too.
You can feel the thread fraying.

The rebellion is over.
The escape is gone.

And I’m not yours to escape with anymore.