to an ex-lover from an ex-writer

all of this is for you. every word, every elipsis leading to more has your name in it. you are the foundation of my sentence structure and the honesty in my misspellings. you steer my run-on sentences and lurk in every proudly corrected mistake. you are my grammar. it's you, conducting my hand and leading me to a better-structured existence. you pen the humor and the tragedy, you are in every broken spine and dog-eared page. you're there when new words are seen for the first time, when old ones are recited as they are read. you are in stage directions and epilogues, titles and dedications. you're whispering in between delicate dialogues and shouting at the mistakes of a perfectly flawed character. i thought someday i would become your pregnant pause, then the mother of your work, and we'd slowly raise the story of our novel existence. i wasn't ready for the reality of a non-fiction ending. this wasn't a short story, and it wasn't the full-length work i had hoped for. but you're the best novella i've ever read.