Defenestration; the act of throwing someone out of a window. Would that be an act or an art?

I had been falling for so long in that black hole that it felt like floating in an endless breeze and suddenly, you came and taught me how to fly. What the difference was. To not settle for anything less. You opened your window for me, I could see it in your eyes.

It’s when I remember do I ask myself; how did I not see it before?

And, a nagging question: Why did you open the window and not the door?

I never expected, after you stitched those wounds, tenderly, gently; fixed me up and smoothed down the lump in my throat, that you would put painkillers in my water, so I would never know, and painstakingly undo each stitch with the cold calculating cruelty I never associated with you.

When you brushed my windblown, tangled hair, and showed me how, if we braided our hair together, we would have to stand shoulder to shoulder until the band broke. You showed me how much it would hurt if we pulled each other apart by force, if one of us tried to run from the other, the pain prickling my mind as I deliberated how many hairs had been plucked from my scalp.

How did I not see the ruse? You were ever so stealthy.

I tried to teach you how to wiggle your eyebrows, so they looked like the very hungry caterpillar inching across a branch. I tried to teach you how to smirk, so you could throw that lopsided smile at me across the class. I tried to teach you how to muster enough swagger to say, “Come at me, bro”; how to do what they could do. I tried to teach you to stop a sneeze by thinking of the word cucumber, and remember how we laughed at that princess’ curse. I thought we were pushing through the crowd together, when I taught you, but… you never learned.

The long moments we spent staring into the other’s laughing eyes, I thought that was love. I thought you were my sister, and I thought you did too. And now every book I read with you, discussed with you, criticized with you burns my fingertips, and I now see the callouses your love left on my hands. I see the reopened wounds which will never heal, no matter how much salve I apply, and the pockmarks of days gone by.

You asked me why I wore my heart on my sleeve. You asked me why I never hid it inside my chest, where it belonged; why I put myself in a vulnerable position before the whole world. You asked me why I was so willing to be hurt, but I told you, I told you that it wasn’t a weakness, it was a strength. That, though it was on my sleeve, it was on the sleeve of my tunic, covered with my armor, the armor I only ever took off in front of you.

And it’s now that I realize, I never really saw your heart. You had closed the window on me long ago, trying to pry my fingers off the ledge that illusioned me, that ever so thin ledge piled with lies, like the floating edge, showing me safety when there wasn’t any, only a three-meter drop to the ground that could kill me if you pushed me wrong.

What I saw was just a reflection of what you saw in me, what I wanted to see. And so I allowed you to lead me to the window boxes, to show me some flowers you had put in those things. A hand on my elbow, guiding me.

And the moment you put your hand on the small of my back, as I leaned out the window, that moment was when I realized: You never learned anything from me. 

A gentle push and a sigh later, I was suspended in the black hole again, time and space at a standstill, my life at a standstill, the stitches undone, and the magic of the painkillers leaving way for the pounding heartache to take root, push out its tendrils and stain my veins with its bitter black blood.

And that was all it took, my friend.

And so, really, defenestration can’t just be an act. An act may be calculated and measured, but art speaks where words are unable to explain. And the way you carefully measured out your words, teaspoon by teaspoon, and fed me your lies, was artistic, really. 

I must applaud you. You taught me many things. But now, when I cannot look at people the same way again, when I cannot relate, or hold up my end of a conversation, or even muster a genuine smile, I must tell you, I can’t remember anything else that I might’ve learned from you.

And though I desperately want to hate you and shut you out just as completely as you have done to me, my heart does not know enough to forget. Because I can’t blame you for hurting me— I am, without doubt, my own worst enemy. Because the one real reason I wear my heart on my sleeve, the reason I never told you, was so that I would not feel disconnected.

But now that the disconnection eats me alive,—how can I love when I’m afraid to fall— an army of mindless arms, enveloping me and pulling me down deeper than I’ve ever been, and I won’t have anyone to help me out this time. It’s just as well, because I’m meant to do this on my own. So I can’t feel betrayed when someone reaches down into my well and pulls me up while I cling to the rope like a lifeline; so that I have no one but myself to blame when yet another friend realizes that I’m gum to be scraped off their shoe sole.

I don’t expect anyone to help me from my funk again. Because this is not the first time. Because this time, I’m moving on. I just wish to say to you the thing that I could not say on grad last year because you didn’t even let me sign your freaking hat. I just wanted to say,  

goodbye.

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