Thank you

Poetry

Photo by Courtney Hedger on Unsplash

I wanna say thank you to all exes — and mean it

without feeling bitter, without the jagged edge of resentment cutting my insides away, making me feel like I’ve swallowed rusty razor blades, without feeling enraged from the hunger from lack of validation for all my pain

I wanna say thank you for teaching me all the things I won’t accept again

like disloyalty, lack of respect, the absence of reciprocity, emotional unavailability and noise that silences all of my dreams

I wanna say thank you for turning their back when I needed them most

for not sticking around to watch me cry on the floor and see my heart breaking a thousand times more, in times of trouble for morphing from lovers into unfriendly ghosts, for haunting me with nightmares of the loneliest kinds of lonely where I don’t recognise my own refection anymore

I wanna say thank you to all exes — and mean it

but the truth is, I’m not quite there yet, I still ache quietly in places they’ll never see

so for my soul, my body, my invictus whole life energy — I guess I’ll just be grateful enough to say thank you to me