I still read your words. I read them because they hurt. I read them because hurt is the only emotion I am capable of feeling, even remotely in every sense of the word.

I read them because I hope one day I will be reminded of that pain when I turn away. When my shoulders get cold. When my head is empty or full. When my heart is numb.

I read them because in your words I find more than most would. More than you think. Certainly more than you know.

When you move on, like the others, I’ll keep reading until it doesn’t hurt anymore, hoping that it is because I’ve moved on, not because my skin is hardened to the now dull pain.

I read because we, you, maybe I, were and are more than words. I read for the syntax. I read for the underlines, the underlying madness.

I read them to find the bits of myself that I left with you, that you carry unwillingly or perhaps unknowingly.

All things go this way for me. I feel more in loss and aftermath than conception and fruition. I have always been a child of circumstance. I have always been a man of consequence. I am not so much in a moment so much as I am regurgitating a reaction that I anticipated. Through this, I control my destiny.

In that irony, I see in my own syntax that somehow I want this in some way. Somehow maybe I even need it. Somehow, I’m getting better. Harder. More resilient. Somehow, I am impervious and stoic or doing my best to be those things. So I don’t have to feel.

I read because I haven’t yet found the words to tell you how truly sorry I am. I read to find an acknowledgment of that.

So I can forgive myself.