This is a response to today's freewrite challenge by @mariannewest. The prompt for today is 'state.' I found myself writing a first-person account of a couple's breakup. This is all I could squeeze into the five-minute time slot. I hope you enjoy it!

Slate

'Thank you.'

That was the last thing I heard him say. He had his back turned to me, of course: he was talking to the ticket agent at the airport. I wish he had turned around, even for a second, to smile or say goodbye or give some kind of acknowledgement that I was there – that I had travelled all the way out there to see him. I don't know what I expected by doing that. What was he going to do: decide not to leave after all? Tell me that he loved me and would stay with me forever, that we'd work things out no matter what?

I guess that was the fantasy I had in mind the whole time I was in the taxi, waiting to burst through the doors and run to him. I shouldn't have been so stupid, imagining that I could somehow turn it all around just by showing up at the airport, after everything that had happened...

Life isn't like the movies.

Before he left, there were so many times I tried to tell him: I'm so sorry. Please listen to me ... what happened was all because of me and my own shit. My own mental state, my own fears... It wasn't you. It was never you. I never should have gone out that night. I should stayed with you, we should have talked ... please hear me out.

All of my pleading, all of my excuses, all of my attempts to miraculously make things right ... they ended with him at the airport, saying 'thank you' in the overly clipped, polite tone of voice he only uses when he's extremely angry. He knew I was standing behind him. Of course he did. But he never said a single word to me. He said 'thank you', he moved away through the barriers ... and just like that, he was gone.