"Text I Will Never Send" & "Text I Actually Did Send" by Marissa Padilla

Text I Will Never Send

Something strange happened today. I was rotting in bed, my favorite pastime since we—ceased.

The buzzing warmth of a budding spring flowed through my open windows. In an instant, the bustle of Los Angeles was swallowed by a forest of Japanese greenery. 

Everything fell quiet. 

The only sound was the crackle of gravel under my feet, each step pulling me further into curious repose. 

Among Tokyo’s chaos, blaring billboards overlooking busy crossings and throttling throngs of tourists on Takeshita Street, the wisdom of the trees created stillness. And a chill. The cold air clamped to the bare skin of my pale cheeks.

Then I saw you.

Sitting at a metal table, drinking blue beer. Tension grew in my shoulders, my desperate gaze settled on your ever-changing eyes—currently pitch black, dark and hard. Two lumps of coal. Two freezing blackholes.

I only ever see you in these flashes now, my mind won’t dare bring you to me in a dream. For there is no better way to ensure I never wake up.

Text I Actually Did Send

I miss you. 

I’ve been writing poems lately to channel my emotions, specifically to channel them away from the sympathetic ears of my friends. 

None of the poems are very good, linguistically or thematically, because they’re all dripping with one-note sadness. The imagery is usually violent and the turn is always something like “Without you I want to die!” which is a tad melodramatic.

I want so desperately to make the break up funny. Maybe if I declared, “I’m done with you!” and turned away and slipped on a banana peel, that would make it funny. Or if you said, “You take everything so personally,” and then a meteor fell from the sky and hit you in the nuts, that would make it funny. Or if we had break up sex and nine months later I gave birth to a dolphin. That would at least be weird, a major improvement over the many weeks of pungent depression I’m currently experiencing. 

But, thanks to the fact that people don’t know you’ve been crying if you do it in the shower, the only stink here is desperation. I really miss you. But I also don’t want to see you right now. I just needed to shout into the blackhole that is your inbox, so I know you’re aware that I still exist.

I thought of another one! What if I took an hour to craft this message, and spent another twenty minutes with my thumb hesitating over the send button, only for you to have blocked my number? That would make it funny. Oh wait, I forgot the part where the locomotive hits me and my head goes boi-oi-oi-oi-oing.

Marissa Padilla is a writer residing in Los Angeles. She/they gravitates towards humor writing, though she can crank out a sad poem when the mood strikes.

She attended Northwestern University, where she majored in Theatre with a focus in Playwriting. 

When she isn’t writing, Marissa can be found aggressively avoiding eye contact with people on LA’s streets and sidewalks.