That’s how you sign every email.
Kind regards.
And I swear some days
those two words
feel like the cruelest joke
in the English language.
Kind regards.
As though kindness
is even close to what remains between us.
As if there is any real regard left.
As though there is not a canyon
sitting quietly beneath any sentence that is typed before that.
Kind regards.
We used to have conversations
that wandered for hours,
through waiting rooms
and across tables,
through ordinary Tuesdays
that I couldn’t have known
would someday become sacred
simply because they were gone.
Now I get emails.
Requests.
Questions.
Things that need fixed.
Things you don’t know how to do
because for so many years
it was enough that I knew how.
And there is something particularly cruel
about being necessary
to someone
who no longer
wants to know you.
So I answer.
Of course I answer.
I find the file.
Fix the problem.
Reset the password.
Know which person to call.
Keep the machinery moving…
Because apparently grief
does not exempt you
from administrative competence.
And then, there it is:
Kind regards.
Two polite little words
standing where a friendship used to be.
And maybe you mean them.
Which is almost worse.
Maybe you genuinely believe
you are reaching toward me.
Maybe from your side of the canyon
this feels like effort.
Maybe you cannot see
that what looks to you
like an outstretched hand
would require me
to step off the cliff to reach it.
I will not do that anymore.
I will not die to prove I still love you.
And I do love you.
Damn it.
That is the inconvenient part
I wish anger could burn away.
I love you enough
to be furious.
Enough to remember.
Enough to know exactly
what has been lost.
Enough to want healing for you
even while some days
I would very much like
to hit reply and say:
Kind regards?
Are you fucking kidding me?
But I don’t.
I remain professional.
A spectacularly boring achievement
for which there will be no reward.
I answer the question.
I do the work.
I protect what is mine to protect.
And slowly
I hope to learn that loving you
does not require me
to keep translating your distance
into something less painful.
It is distance.
This is grief.
That is the canyon.
And these are the boundaries
keeping me alive on my side of it.
Maybe someday
you will understand.
Maybe someday
you will stop reaching
from the same patch of dry ground
and wondering why
I won’t come back from the garden.
Maybe someday you will walk,
and I will have, too.
Maybe somewhere beyond
all this hurt and history
there is a place
where the canyon ends.
Maybe we will find each other there,
older, healed, different,
carrying fewer things
we mistook for love.
I still hope so.
Which pisses me off too.
But until then,
I will do the work
that is mine.
I will grieve the friendship
that was ours.
I will stop confusing
being needed
with being known.
And when your name
appears in my inbox,
I will breathe.
I will remember
where the edge is.
I will answer what needs answering.
And perhaps,
when I am feeling
particularly healthy,
I will even resist
throwing my laptop
into the canyon.
Kind regards,
Stephanie