How We Became Past Tense 2

Muwado Ad by Muwado - Africa's Storytelling Platform

LETTER 2 – The night of 19th January, 2026. 

I wish I could take our memories, every laugh, every late night, every version of us… and press them into your mind until you remember how alive we once were.
Because lately it feels like you’ve forgotten. Or worse, like you remember everything but it just doesn’t move you anymore.
I have always been afraid of this part. The part where things stop feeling electric. I’ve lived here before, with different people, and it has always been me standing in the ruins, clinging to what was, wondering how something so full and loud could become so suddenly quiet.
I’ve never understood how two people can want each other so intensely, talk every second, miss each other even while together, only to one day grow distant and accept it like it’s nothing.
I’ve never been able to accept it. I don’t know if that makes me broken, or if it means I just love differently.
You say it’s normal. Everyone says that. But it doesn’t feel normal to me. It feels like watching something precious slowly slip through my fingers while I’m told to relax my grip. It terrifies me.
I’m terrified because I don’t know how to want you less. I don’t know how to fold myself smaller, how to mute what I feel without losing who I am. I’ve always been all-feeling, all-heart, a wrecking ball.
And I think what once drew you in to me, now just exhausts you. It feels that way sometimes. You used to be like me. You used to tell me everything, every small thought, every insignificant moment. Distance didn’t matter. We talked endlessly, kissed endlessly, stayed up far too late because we couldn’t stop laughing or touching or loving.
We didn’t just exist together, we made love. And that meant something to me in a way I didn’t know was possible.
How do I explain how much that mattered? How do I explain that it still lives in me like it happened just a second ago?
That I’m grieving something that’s still technically alive, but just hollowed out now?
I don’t know how to move forward anymore, my love. I don’t know when to speak or when to stay quiet. I hang up calls after a few sentences because your voice turns sharp if it lasts any longer. , and I pretend I’m fine.

Little by little, I keep losing pieces of you. And maybe you’re losing pieces of me too. The difference is, you don’t seem to notice. Or if you do, it doesn’t trouble you.

You keep saying everything is fine. And that scares me more than anything, because I don’t understand how you can’t see that we’re fading.
Sometimes I wonder if you’ve realized I’m not what you truly want. Or maybe I am, but not in the way you imagined, and now you don’t know how to leave without hurting me, so you stay, but half-present.

I hope I’m wrong.
………..God, I hope I’m wrong.
I know you. I know you’d survive letting go, even if it had to be now. You’re strong that way. You have time, options, a future that doesn’t have to include me.

And that realization breaks something in me, because it makes me wonder if I was ever a certainty to you at all. If I were, maybe things wouldn’t have changed this way.

Funny how we thought you were the over-thinker. Turns out it’s me.

#LettersWeNeverSent

Written by

Lus The Poet

Follow

Did this story move you? Every gift goes directly to Lus The Poet — writers on Muwado earn from reader appreciation, not algorithms. Even $1 makes a difference.

Gift Once Gift Monthly