I have held on to you so long that my hands still clench around you.
My fingertips try to press in to you one last time, to roll across your
skin in a final and heroic effort to prove my identity. But you barely
stir as one finger then the next has to release its grip. I move to the edge of the bed and I tell you I am leaving. I say
other things too, they tumble from a wine-thick tongue but in time to
come I will only ever remember this. How I say I am leaving and you
mumble I’ll see you soon, and how with your eyes still closed you miss the way I shake my head, no.
I know you don’t get up after I close the door behind me. I know you
don’t move to the window to watch me tremble into the night. You are not
looking down to see me stumble through cracks of concrete in the heels
you removed so carefully over dinner, and you don’t watch as I recede to
a grey as cobbled as the street below. With no neon flash of text to
say goodnight, no vibrating phone to accompany me home, I know you are
already sound asleep.
It is my 35th birthday and I will not cry. One wobbly foot in front of the other on this midnight street, I walk away. 
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