My voice cracks like leaking pipes, and I forget to apologize for the flood. Some days I pretend that you haven’t seen the dirty parts of me already. That you don’t know the alleyway in these veins. I still don’t know how to apologize for the last time, for the red words I spilled across the dinner table like wine that didn’t get you drunk enough to leave. You’re disappearing inside of my hands. Out of all the ghosts who call here, you’re the only conversation I don’t dread like Monday morning. I am sorry I kept offering you the empty. Some twisted part of me must have thought you could fill it up. I am learning that if you are constantly handing yourself poison, you will think it’s all you deserve. I always wondered how I would handle losing you, but I never wondered what it’d be like to lose myself. I am finding my way back to the body I abandoned, and it’s okay if no one helps me find my way back in. It’s okay if I’m the only one who knows how to love it for a while. It’s okay if I learn to be happy without someone else telling me I deserve to be.