Abnegate.

The last time I saw him he had settled on a bench nestled in the bushes beneath a dozen birdhouses hanging from the boughs of a great oak. He had kicked off his shoes and with bare feet planted firmly in the grass he scribbled steadily in the composition notebook in his lap. I turned away.

I sat back seat, pulled over to the side of the road, and slumping down to avoid detection while I waited for my driver flipped through the pages of my book. And that's when he knocked on my window. When I saw who it was I rolled my eyes oh-so-dramatically, and as I rolled down the window he squatted down so that he could look up at me, beseechingly.

It was a compromising situation, to be sure, and my first instinct was towards flippancy, but I saw indignant tears in his eyes and my heart broke when his voice cracked: "What I don't understand;" he said, What I don't understand. "What I don't understand," he said, "is how you can hate me so much, and yet you can't seem to leave me alone." And I jumped from flippant to indignant myself, sputtering out "YOU'RE the one," before quietly shutting down. Because how could I ever hate him?

But this part I kept silent, out of kindness or fear or, I don't know really, but this ended it. Ended. Like so many endings before, this changed us, and who we are to each other, if we're anything to each other at all.

And then I woke up.