is it a crime?

that i still think about you sometimes.

judge and prosecution let me know my offense. citing article 49, my constitutional right. let me know my offense. you do not answer. you’re not the first, to have me pleading for a version contrary to mine. all i ever wanted was to understand. tell me again. tell me a thousand times and i wouldn’t concur. i pleaded not guilty wasn’t that enough? couldn’t i be enough?

the courtroom is quiet and heavy. the truth is dense. silence demands i fill it in for myself.

which will it be?

my eyes wander like yours. though as much as they travelled they never settled. never reached mine. i was never your destination.

vince sits with sucken eyes and a hunched back. i avoid his stare that hits like arrows to my spine. he told me this would happen.

finlay to my right. the three of us always joked about having the devil and angel on my shoulders. to vince, finlay was the demon. to me, he was the angel. on our side.

i feel lisa’s presence heavily. all the weight she’s had to carry. today she’ll lay it at the dock. all she had to hear. the lies i gave to cover your truths.

sasha eugenia and naya sit at the gallery. the girls who rooted for you. is it disappointment? anger? disgust? what do you feel towards me? i hold everyone together but you couldn’t hold me, i never let you. hindsight’s cruel. you can’t save me now.

jules sits closely too. witness to all the gentle, highs, spiraling and our slow demise.

the defendant and the evidence. i stand at the center of it all. you’re nowhere to be seen. of course. you couldn’t show up, even for this. you sent your representative. it seems everyone’s always better at telling me how you feel. anyone could be better.

i plead not guilty. it’s not a crime that i still think about you sometimes. absurd to be charged with memory while you roam free with my heart in your hands.

the judge sighs. we’ve been at this a hundred times. worn out files. tired of these hearings, multiple substacks, lengthy voice notes, repeat exhibits of the same wound.

let it go. let him.

vince looks away. finlay doesn’t speak. lisa tightens her grip on whatever she’s been carrying for me this entire time. the gallery shifts. everyone knows bow this story ends but they still stay.

i cite orpheus and eurydice. achilles and patroclus. invoking the greek mythologies without care for jurisdiction.

orpheus looked back. in every version of the myth. no matter how the story is rewritten it always ends the same. we keep turning back to each other. isn’t that love? tell me. that surely is evidence of it. if i argue enough i can salvage us. appeal that verdict.

achilles and patroclus. he could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, he could know him blind. by the way his breaths came, and his feet struck the earth, he would know him in death and at the end of the world. where do i put all that? the intagible evidence of love that stills within me, this court cannot catalogue that. is it a crime then that i think about him sometimes?

i’m damned for loving you and how dare you let me.

i stand as the accused yet i bear the scars and the hollowed-out heart. i am thin with all the love he sucked from me and my feet wobble. no strength to be summoned.

i’ve sang your name even in moments of rest. like reflex, my mouth curves around the syllables of it. i taste you on my tongue. this frail attempt at keeping you fully from disappearing from me. i’ve abandoned me, unrecognizable to the stranger in the mirror. someone i once knew. someone she couldn’t rescue. my hands are calloused from trying to hold on to you. ever so fleeting like smoke. in my trying, i trap it in my throat but it burns. you were never meant to stay. smoke demands that exhale. i prayed for you to stay but turns out i was singing hymns day and day, kneeling, ritualistic stuff i didn’t even believe in, to a wrong god.

the prosecution rises. my innocence is about to be picked apart but i’m not yet done.

i was just a girl. young, dumb and in love, the biggest crime. i know what you’ll raise. i was ‘avoidant’ ‘distant’ ‘unresponsive’. careful incision. you’ve thought of these long before the trial. and you’re right. i loved you so much i resent you.

wore myself out. bled for you. kept your image stitched together in public light so no one could see the seams at home. me loving you was your social currency, upped your reputation. affirmed you over and over. you needed me to prove that your misery deserved company. your worst parts could be held, tolerated, consequences out the window. your pathetic piece of shit self could be loved.

“language shirley!” the judge cuts in hitting the gavel. you remember when you hit me?

the prosecution’s unsteady. the proceeding’s turned ungovernable. love can’t be governed and its ruins spatter.

i loved you so much i resent you. kept coming back over and over. taking you back over and over. every time we restarted whatever we were, all the pretenses that held us, all the ignorance and feigning over. resentment came as a residue for love.

so you hold me liable for your feelings, what about me? maybe i’d consider contributory negligence. maybe both of us were inside the chain of causation, both of us altering the conditions that made the outcome possible. that feels too legalistic for what it actually was. i loved you but i didn’t consent to the hurt. my hurting you was as a result of you hurting me and fuck, that’s complicated.

our love couldn’t continue operating through a system of hurt. you’re mad i left, mad i’m distance. you don’t get to do that. judge do something, he can’t!

we tried and tried but we kept breaking under the weight of words we couldn’t say.

court adjourned. no judgement can be passed. too layered.

is it a crime that i think about you sometimes? what’s rationality, logics to a person in love? a person in deep resentment?

i hate you so much and that is my way of showing love.

showing love to myself:)