We broke up on a bench in Fort Greene Park on Wednesday, around the time the light goes gold and everyone's dog is suddenly the friendliest dog alive.
It wasn't dramatic. I keep wanting to tell you it was dramatic so this would be a better story. There was no shouting. No grand Bollywood rain. Just two people on a bench in Fort Greene Park agreeing, kindly, that the thing between us had quietly stopped growing.
He was good to me. That's the part nobody warns you about. The breakups where no one is the villain are somehow harder. There's no anger to hold onto. Just a soft, deflating sadness, like a balloon three days after the party.
We'd dated four months. Long enough that he knew I took my chai with too much sugar and I knew he hated the texture of mango but ate it anyway because I missed home. Small intimacies. The ones that actually count.
On the bench in Fort Greene Park he held my hand the whole time we ended it. Which felt cruel and tender in equal measure. We hugged. He offered to wait with me for the train. I said no. Some walks home you have to take alone or they don't count.
I'd stopped at the bodega before the park, so I rode the C train back to Manhattan holding a bag of groceries and a freshly closed chapter. Eggs. A lime. The specific loneliness of carrying ingredients for a dinner you'll now eat by yourself.
My mother always says relationships are like rotis. Some puff up perfectly. Some don't. You don't throw out the whole batch. You just make the next one.
I'm not okay yet. I want to be honest about that. I cried a little on the C train and a woman pretended not to notice, which in New York is the highest form of kindness.
But I keep coming back to that bench in Fort Greene Park, the gold light, his hand in mine while he gently let me go. There are worse ways to end. There are so many worse ways.
Some love stories don't break. They just finish.
Love,