If you loved me, you’d have waited until the weekend to run away, so I could fall apart in safety, without the menace of a twelve-hour shift come dawn, hanging over my head like a sledgehammer. But you left in the middle of the week, clothes and suitcase gone, your absence like a crack in the walls, letting in the February cold.
If you loved me, you wouldn’t have deposited a large bag of potato chips on the table. You knew I’d demolish it, anxiety making a hole in my stomach for the chips to fall into. That I’d then feel guilty, and need a drink. That I’d walk to the fridge, stare at the empty shelves, and feel the old craving steal up my spine. Fuck abstinence. There was no one left to hurt, except myself. You were gone and I was alone, just the way I deserved to be.
If you loved me, you’d have left me the car with gas in it, so I could make a quick dash to the liquor store three kilometres down the icy road. But you took the car and I had to walk, in the patched-up boots I couldn’t afford to replace, and the jacket you bought for me last winter at a clearance sale. Red is your colour, you’d said, and you’d kissed me with a desperation that already tasted of loss, of grief.
If you loved me, you’d have picked up the fifteenth time I tried to call you as I walked, face bent against the driving wind, fingers numb with cold. You’d have picked up and said hello goodbye something, and I wouldn’t have thrown my phone into the dirty snow banked on the side of the road. Not that the police could have done anything, even if they had come, and it would have been too late anyway, but still. It would have given my hands something to do, my voice something to say, instead of the wordless scream that came out of my throat when I looked up and saw what was there, spread out against the darkness of the winter sky.
If you loved me, the monsters would not have come. They would not have descended on me in a rush of black wings and hunger, clawing the jacket off my body, and tearing the flesh off my bones with their wickedly curved and cruel beaks. I wouldn’t have bled into the ground, thinking, red is my colour.
If I loved you, the way you needed to be loved.