I Found His Black File Before He Did

A tribute to the ruin that still smells like him.

Some women beg for the truth.
I wait for it to slip out —
half-drunk, half-dreamed, half-dragged through the back door of his mouth at 3 AM.

He never lied to me, not really.
He just postponed the confession.
As if silence could spare me the sting.
As if my hands weren’t already in the wreckage,
pulling secrets out like broken glass.

I didn’t call it a file.
I didn’t call it anything.
I just kept notes on his pauses,
the way his jaw tremored when the words finally came:
"I’m an addict."
It was never fine.

He wasn’t the addict because he was weak.
He was the addict because someone had to be.
The scapegoat. The storage unit for a house full of guilt too proud to take its own trash out.

He gave me heartbreak and half-truths.
I gave him the softest parts of me — the ones that remember scent more than words.
He scorched me and didn’t say sorry.
He probably thought I’d circle back anyway.

But I keep my ruin archived.
I know what he couldn’t name.
I keep it in a dark bottle at the back of my throat.
Sometimes I open it just to inhale what’s left of him:
smoke, sweat, shame — something bright that never got to bloom.

So no — this was heartbreak.
And strategy.
And ritual.

A gorgeous, complex mess —
sealed tight, worn warm on my wrists,
proof that some women don’t wait for apologies.
We bottle the burn.
We wear it like proof.
We let it haunt whoever thinks we’ll come back for more.

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I Could Love You Forever—But Not at the Cost of Becoming Less

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The Boy Beneath the Bravado