Fought My Way Out

I was never across from you. I was beside you, facing the same thing.

Then the line moved. I do not know which day. I only know my effort began arriving as attack. The same push that was holding our wall up looked, from where you stood, like a hand against your chest.

Fear does that. It cannot read intention, only pressure. Whatever pushes is enemy. It does not check which way the pushing faces.

So you defended yourself from your own defense. And I was fighting on two fronts: the thing we started against, and the person I started with.

The classification is what cost us. Not the arguments. Arguments end. Once I was filed as enemy, everything I did was read from that file. Loyalty looked like strategy. Softness looked like bait. There is no move an enemy can make that proves he was never one.

The only way out of the file was to stop appearing in it.

You did not have to fight me.
I was already fighting for us.
You lost me the minute you made me one.

What we were against is still out there. I still face it. The seat beside me is not a wound anymore. It is just empty.