The Kindest Thing

I haven’t checked your Instagram in weeks.
I hid all your friends’ profiles,
tucked them away next to the knives
at the bottom of my kitchen cabinet.
“Never play with sharp things,” my mother said. 

No new news,
just the same repetitive beats
playing, looping, stuck.

I haven’t written your name in months.
My fingers have forgotten its shape,
the way it curved,
the way it used to dance across my keyboard,
like some foreign alphabet I don’t recognize anymore.

I haven’t said your name in months.
When someone asked me about you, 
I would use all the words in the dictionary,

anything—
but you.

Funny enough, hearing the name of someone
I used to hold so tightly,
now hits like lightning in broad daylight,
like a slap in a silent room.
Sudden,

strange,
loud in all the wrong ways.

I think, slowly, 
you’re dissolving into a distant memory.
A blurred picture on an old TV screen,
a half-remembered dream.
And for that, I’m grateful.

Perhaps,
all the tears I left in your pillowcase
have finally whispered to you
that the kindest thing
you could’ve ever given me
was your silence.