Words Unsaid

You didn't say you didn't love me.
You didn't tell me we're better off as friends, you didn't have to.
I said it to myself a thousand times that you couldn't love me the way you should, that you could never need me the way you should, that you could never want me the way you should.
 
There were words hanging in the air afterward, like black pollution over our beloved city, it is still waiting to be cleared, but it is just so hard to do so once it is there.  Are we the ones that put it there?
 
There were words you should have said, there were things I should have kept to myself, because where do I get off calling myself unlovable, and where do you get off allowing me to do that?
 
There were silences that you should have filled, there were pauses that I shouldn't have left, but we did anyway.  And you never said no, and I never said yes, but we could fill thousands of books with things that we never said but we should have.
 
We have both had heartbreak before.  We have both swallowed it whole and cut it into tiny pieces to scatter in the wind, never to be seen again.  We know hurt, and we know each other, and we said we would never hurt each other, but it only hurts because of what you should have told me, it only hurts because of what I should have said, it only hurts because I can feel you notice me from across the room, across the table, across the universe.
 
Maybe you are afraid.  God knows, I am afraid too.  We have seen each other's worst fears, and we have learned that facing them apart doesn't work, we have figured out that doing things alone are not half as easy as doing them together.
 
They have hurt each other in ways you have only begun to imagine.  Please stop trying to.  They have loved each other in a way I have never experienced, but they have not known each other as well as we do.  They have promises they did not keep.
 
But we do not.
Take my hand, and we will not make their mistakes.
Take my hand, and we will keep the promises that we make.
Take my hand, and we will write our own story.
 
But do not let it end here.
But do not let our story end as another book filled with words unsaid...because we have far too many of those.