I didn’t feel betrayed. I didn’t feel as if I was kept in the dark throughout the whole thing. To be honest, I felt it coming. I knew you were too good to be true; let it be your words or your entire self. There was always a chance, a tiny chance that one day you would do it, and we were already drifting apart — straying further and further from each other everyday — for the chance to quadruple.

When I found out, it wasn’t shock. There was no surprise. No gasp in my mouth that was never agape to begin with. No shudder in my leg as if I was at the edge of my seat watching the whole thing. No quiver in my lips as if I wanted to shout and scream into my pillow. Nothing. Just these words flashing through my head: “I knew this would happen.”

Even the greenest of flags become red when they stand too many and too close. I’ve always known I wouldn’t keep you long, and it’s a shame that I didn’t cherish the times we had knowing they were so little. Although I will forever immortalize our times of “almost” as the times where I was treated so kindly — and ever so short-lived.

I knew I didn’t deserve you then, and I don’t deserve you now, and likely I won’t deserve you ever. You’re too good to be true, so all of you become false. I didn’t cross your name out in all red, you just became too blurry to see — and holding you was like squeezing sand, warm and real until you feel it slipping out your fingers and disappearing.

I could never hate you. I could never write out words with hatred surging to my fingertips. You were good to me and I wasted it.

But I want to unlearn you. I want to forget the way you wooed me, I no longer want to hear your voice at the back of my head where your laughter also resides. My mind becomes a safe place for you to live in freely but it will always feel vacant, like a cold chamber no one wants to occupy.

So how can I remain loud whilst being sad when you’re in every quiet space in my head?

So how can my laugh’s melody be composed by someone else when every time a note is sung, it was already heard by you?

So how can I unlearn you when you already forgot about me first? Letting me wonder if the times we had were far from memorable, making forgetting you a lot harder?