Power Transfer: Receiving the {“U Up?”} Text from an Ex

I’ve never gotten the “u up” text.

He’s too manipulative to be so crude.

Instead, when he texts me late at night the first message he sends is my full name.

It demands my attention, and it works because how can I ignore it? It’s my name.

No one uses it anymore.

But he does.

It’s arresting.

I think he knows this. Of course he knows this.

I can always sense when it’s coming—there’s something in the electromagnetic waves that reaches out, taps me on the shoulder and whispers Look out.

The text always comes when I have my shit together. When I’m feeling self-assured. When I’m relaxed. When my guard is down. When I’m—dare I say—happy.

Long ago, I deleted him from my contacts out of self-preservation, but whenever the number pops up on my phone, I know.

I know it’s him by the area code and by the way he types out my name. It’s the way that he says it in person. There’s this lilt that’s both charming and a little menacing.

He knows my thing is words, so he says all of the right ones. He says them until he has me right where he wants me and then he pounces on my weakness, a leopard overcoming an antelope.

Sometimes I give in willingly.

Because I’m amused. Because it’s, well, fun isn’t the right word.

Sometimes, though, it makes me want to scream. Sometimes, like the next morning in the light of day, the memory of it whooshing through my veins like a poison, I’m so angry with myself that my skin crawls.

I am better than this.

We both know it.

But it never stops the text from coming.

I read my full name in the window of my phone, I hear it coming out of his mouth—

It’s a promise. It’s a threat.

Sometimes, I delete it as soon as it arrives and I feel free.

There’s something about receiving the text, though, that’s satisfying. After all, it means he still thinks about me, and doesn’t that mean I won?

What exactly it is I’m winning, when the prize is something I don’t want, is hard to say.