Don’t you know it’s you I’m always writing about? You were the one that got away, except you’re much too big to be a fish, and I could never outsmart you, not even with the most delicious bait. Your eyes used to harden into glass when they looked at me, until I hated them so much I wished they would fall out and crack, but with time and persuasion, now they are soft blue cottonballs. We had plans to conquer the world together, and we may not have achieved that, but we’ve almost conquered each other. We still won, in the end.

They say you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone, but you never really left, did you? One morning I woke up to find my walls painted bright yellow, and though they’ve dimmed some, the color is still there. We were married long ago, remember? And we haven’t been close since. I lost my ring the other day and it made me wonder if I ever loved you when I should have, if I ever loved you when I had the chance to. Our lives are merely pages and pages of our own words, so I made that a symbolic occurrence and I decided not to listen to my third-person omniscient narrator when he told me where on the ground my ring was lying, crying, waiting for me to pick it up.

These days it’s looking more and more like you’ll leave life the same way you came in—with your fragile lungs full of fluid and not knowing how to breathe. When you go swimming with the fishes, tell me if you see the one that got away, okay? I know I told you I didn’t care, but oh, I didn’t mean a word of it, I really didn’t. Someday you will go missing and I will dive down beneath reefs of dying coral and find you with a bucket-ended mermaid tail and wide eyes full of saltwater and hair floating all around as if it was still falling.

I was stupid and desperate back then, and your sleek frame and strong hands and long legs and cold cheeks and thick eyelashes were constantly at the fore of my mind. I used you, oh yes I did, and you used me too, and when I saw her using you all I could think of was how badly I wanted to use you. Then you bleached your hair, and I think a little bit soaked through your scalp and bleached your brain, because every one of the colors I saw in your eyes faded out and they weren’t light or lively or labyrinthine anymore, they were just empty, empty gray.

For an actor, you weren’t really such a great liar, or maybe you just weren’t trying. Now that I think about it, I distinctly remember that you never said anything that might make me think you cared. Was that what you call justification? I don’t know if I’ve ever forgiven someone as quickly as I forgave you, even after everything you did or didn’t say. Was it because you make such a beautiful mannequin, poised high in the shop window and smiling invitingly at the passersby, hoping one of them, like me, will want to become a customer?

I never loved you as much as I did when you cried and admitted you were wrong, you were wrong, you knew it was bad and you did it anyway, OH GOD, you did it anyway. Every song reminded you of everyone and everything and soon I couldn’t sing in front of you anymore, or I’d take you on a trip down one of your many memory gravel roads. You called me late at night and we talked about SI. X-acto knives and razors and needles won’t save you, I said, while we both cried, and you told me no, no, no they won’t, but you did it anyway, OH GOD, you did it anyway.

You were the most fun to hate, because I knew you never hated me and I never hated you. Once upon a time, you were my goddess, the one person I actually wanted, and I think deep down I always knew that goddesses didn’t worship humans. I just wish I’d paid more attention to the thoughts hidden down there, because they might have prepared me for the abrupt change of religion. I endured with a serene smile all your anger and all your taunts, even when you turned those few I loved against me. Yes, you really were a pagan goddess, complete with all the legendary power and wrath. I laughed when you screamed, and when you thought no one was looking, you pleaded, and I laughed some more.

I doubt either of us can stop thinking about those nights, those morbid parties where we ate cake and ice cream and my words. Those rooms were so dark and those blankets were so warm and your hands were so cold that I froze wherever you touched me. It always started innocently enough, and then you’d say “just this once” and I’d say “just this once” and breaking one rule would turn into breaking two and three and ten. “Happy birthday,” I murmured, and I gave you the only present you ever appreciated: myself.

Two years of hopelessness shouldn’t have amounted to this. Two years of knowing you were out of my reach shouldn’t have ended with you just an arm’s length and another year away. When I tell stories about you I remember all the stories I decided to forget, and even after reliving your lips on my skin, I never can imagine that you might be mine one day. “It’s purely physical,” you promised me, and I breathed a sigh of oh-good-that-means-nothing’s-really-changed.

I cry for you all the time. I cry for your bright, naïve smiles and your bright, naïve life. You are learning the wrong way, being taught by a child, and I am voluntarily exiled to a glass prison where I watch you die because I cannot help you live. On those rare days when we are left alone, I break glass in case of emergency and give you hugs and kisses and kind words, with hope that they won’t be forgotten despite the alarming rate at which your free will is decaying. Eventually I will be free and you will develop some sort of fighting spirit, and I want you to know that you only need one phone call to escape; you won’t have to wait as long as I will.

When I look at you all I see is blue and gray and green, and if you’re wondering, that’s why I called you my ocean skyline this morning. It’s so refreshing to know again that someone thinks I’m an angel, even though you weren’t there to see my life before you shone your starshine on it. Together we will conquer the world with my hands tied behind your back, and then we’ll make a whole new one just so we can conquer some more. Don’t you know it’s you I’m always writing about?