Conflict Resolution

by Jessica Kraker

You look like a conflict I am unwilling to enter, a war I have no intention of fighting. Yet when I waved a white flag, you ignored it, charging faster instead of pulling back. Why can’t you ever follow the rules of engagement?

You just never give up. I have the high ground, yet the odds have never mattered to you, have they? You don’t need military strategies to beat me. Your advantages have always been skin deep. That’s where you are right now – under my skin, pushing for a confrontation.

But my mouth is sealed, stitched shut with heartstrings. I guess that’s the only way to fight back. My lack of comebacks makes you shifty more than my glares do.

You see my silence as the death knoll.

But we’ve been dead for longer than this moment. My body was left in a train station, standing across that platform and watching as you kissed someone. The rose I gave you from our date fell onto the track. You didn’t even notice, your body entwined in another.

But I did.

And now you want a battle when you already won the war. You want yelling and anger and you want to feel… but you can’t feel. I’m sure it’s the dead thing inside you that made you do it. Dead hearts aren’t good at feelings, are they?

So I wish you’d take your spoils of victory and ride off into the sunset, never looking back.

Leave me with my scuffed shoes in this restaurant, the one where I broke up with you. Just now. Your eyes are still wide with annoyance as I ball up the napkin in my lap, my eyes focused on the silverware.

I will not fight you, but I will subdue you. Because at least I know that when you walk away, it won’t be with my heart.

No. That’s wrapped in my mouth where I stuffed it, to swallow down words like “I love you” and “we can make it.”

No. That’ll live to fight another day.