Translated from Dutch. Nederlandse versie hier.

You were new here and didn’t speak the language. I wish you would have been honest when I find two wineglasses in the dishwasher, when a woman’s name has checked her mail on your laptop and I detect a long black hair in the windowsill.

You looked a little like Rutger Hauer. I wish you would have been honest when I see ghosts in the wall you build on the sheets of our bed. When I don’t take into account your jetlag, your flu, your lack of sleep. When I don’t acknowledge how hard you try to make it up.

A small jar of dried basil in the drawer. Your profile said you liked to cook. I wish you would have been honest when the insurance guy asks if I am the girlfriend of “the Israeli guy”, when you live above the most secure jeweller in the country, and when I find a call-up addressed to you for a cervical cancer check up. The initials were the same as on your British passport.

It rained but she visited me anyway. It was the first time she brought a present. I wish you would have been honest when you break up without giving me a reason. While you are doing my best friend who is also keeping it from me. I now call her ‘the whore’.

The excuse came when ignoring didn’t work. I wish you would have been honest when the email gets lost that speaks of the things you prefer undefined. Always the email that holds my heart which gets lost in Hotmail, spamtagged by Outlook or is apparently “intercepted by your girlfriend”.

It wasn’t until later that I saw you were back with her. I wish you would have been honest when I am “demanding” because I want to see you, when I am “pushy” because I am in love, and “sick” because I know the day on which you were born.

Your friends begged you to go to town, but you jumped in your car and came to me. I wish you would have been honest when you don’t have time for me due to sickness, work and study. When I reread the hundreds of Tweets we sent each other in one night and then the six from the past week.

Your mail didn’t start with Dear, Xx at the bottom had been removed.
Your last sentence finished with three dots.
But they spoke the truth.
…