Don’t Say Goodbye in French

Don’t say goodbye in French...
Your phone recorded on the table.
“Let me finish once
without you making it beautiful.”

The dictionary lay beneath your coffee,
red corrections in the margins.
You had translated half my letters,
made my roughest language soften.
“We are not villains.
We are tired, and we are done.”
I heard the words clearly
until you changed the final one.

You looked at the waveform,
took one breath: “Au revoir.”
Not “never.” Not “it’s over.”
Something gentler, something far.
“Don’t leave me in the future tense.”
You stopped the recording,
then started it again.

Don’t say goodbye in French.
Don’t leave me in the future tense.
Say “we are done”; let the sentence end.
Don’t say “au revoir” if we won’t meet again.

Four months later, my phone surfaced
that recording in a memory.
I played it while the kettle warmed.
Each “au revoir” became “not yet”
because hope mistranslates beautifully.

I blamed the softness of your language,
but I was the one pressing replay.
So I wrote the sentence plainly:
“We were real. We are complete.”
No question mark. No hidden doorway.
I deleted the recording
and let the kitchen stay quiet.

I blamed your language for the softness,
but I kept pressing play.
You gave me an ending.
I translated it to “maybe.”
The cruelest hope was not your French.
It was the door I chose to leave.

Don’t say goodbye in French—
and I won’t live in the future tense.
You said “au revoir”; I heard “not yet.”
Tonight I let the sentence end.

The dictionary closes flat.
Two cups become one.
We were here,
and now we are not.