yshro

but still, i pick up those letters again—just to feel their useless weight in my hands.

you rise in me before i can brace for it, and it takes me back to the first lines of your confessions. i look at the life i’m trying to build away from you, and there you are, standing in the doorway of it, uninvited and impossibly present: a proclamation of love if i’d rather forget.

and god, it feels like the end of the world all over again.

i don’t know how i ever said i was over you. the words tasted wrong even then, but i kept forcing them out, hoping they’d settle somewhere deep and build a steadiness i could lean on. i kept repeating them until my throat felt scraped clean, until they became rooted in belief. though, i hardly believed it then, and i hardly believe it now.

i told myself it would save me, that it would silence these pathetic longings,

these unwanted letters.

i despise you. i despise how deeply i feel for you. i wish, with all that i am, that i could pluck this foolish heart out and forget this incessant feeling.

i think i’m finally going to let you go.

i’ve deleted your photos, boxed the keepsakes, and, somehow, forgotten the song we would have danced to at our wedding.

still, even with these pieces gone, there is so much i’ll never forget—how could i? you were my first real love, the first i’d given my heart to wholly, blemished and all.

i’ll still wonder what kind of bouquet you would have made for our special day, and if the rain would have blessed us while we spoke our vows away.

i’ll think of the autumns we might have known, and the winters where our laughter might have thawed the cold. i’ll think of every memory we might have made, every street we’d have wandered ‘til our hair turned grey.

but i won’t linger there any longer.

you were my lover. you were my life. you are my once-in-a-lifetime summer. but those days have long passed.

i won’t cling to this sweet nostalgia anymore, won’t see you in everything i do, won’t love you like i used to.

i’m going to live my own life, too. so don’t be too hard on me, okay? don’t visit my dreams anymore; don’t show yourself in all the things i love.

know that if i was asked to go back, i would, i would fall for you all the same. know that i’m learning to look forward, to not miss you anymore.

know that i pray you find a new love, that it is more vibrant than any spring we’ve shared.

i want to hate you—want to blame you for moving on—but i know i can’t.

that would be stupid. it would be wrong.

you’re just letting time pass. you’re not clinging to the past like i am.

but i can’t move on. i want to stay here, rooted in this place, in case there is the slightest chance that you’ll look back.

still, there are thoughts that creep up late at night: foul and putrid and sometimes too real.

did you ever really want to get married? was i actually the love of your life? was i going to meet your family? were you going to meet mine?

or were you relieved, were you thankful, when our dreams fell apart—because we were both just girls, and your mother would never approve.

maybe you’ll find a man that’s right for you. someone who loves you and cares for you—someone your father smiles at in family photos.

maybe you’ll marry him.

maybe you’ll wear a wedding dress and i’ll never get to see it. maybe you’ll read your vows and, somewhere between the lines, you’ll see my name instead of his. maybe, for a breath and no more, you’ll stutter mine before fixing it into his.

a foolish, selfish hope, i know.

i know it isn’t reasonable. you’ve chosen your future, and i’m not in it.

maybe you never wanted me to be—not really.

still, i check my phone at midnight, half-expecting your name to light the screen.

pathetic, isn’t it?

soft sunlight spills through linen curtains, bathing the room in every orange i’d ever known. it washes over all that is you and whatever complaint was poised on my tongue stills at the sight, lost in the first rush of amber light.

i watch as the glow paints shadows across your shoulder, spilling gold along your collarbones. it looks like like honey on your skin, and i almost reach out to kiss it.

i don’t. cowardice dries my mouth and steadies my hands at a trembling distance.

instead, i find your palm, quivering fingertips tracing the lines there like they’ll show me your soul—like i’ll learn everything about you from the callouses beneath your digits, from the scratches that scar your skin, and the tattoo under your ring.

soon the oranges will blanch to noon, and the city will reclaim us, but for now, i’ll rest my thumb against the blue-threaded river of your wrist and bank the warmth of your pulse for colder days.

selfishly, i’ll pray that this moment lasts a second more, that time forgets itself—

just long enough for me to memorize you in this light.

because how would i—how could i respond?

how do i tell them, in words, that my heart stills a little more but beats a little faster every time she’s around, that a wintery wave of goosebumps raise on my skin and ease into a fire, warm enough to mend wounds.

that every time i see her, the first snow of winter falls, but the warmth of spring crawls along my skin, sprouting flowers wherever her fingers had touched.

how do i explain to them that my chest expands to make room for her, that there’s a part of my soul etched with her name and a hundred other feelings that i could never tame.

how do i tell them that every time i see a dandelion laying idly by, i want to pick it off and wish for her. would that be too selfish? of all the wishes a fool could make, i want nothing more than my love in my embrace.

would they understand? that even if the world came crumbling, i would still reach for her hand.

how would i explain to them that every morning i wake with dreams that stay freshly replayed.

like paint blurred into perfection on a once empty canvases and music notes filing on blank paper, i find my muse in her.

how would i tell them that she is what stitches me at my seams and holds me together, that she is each feather of my wing, and in the morning, each beam on my skin, that if i were to lose my breath, she would be my oxygen—that her hands would breathe me back to life.

how could i ever say such a thing and still seem sane?

“more than you could imagine,” i say.

and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be able to.

maybe their imagination could be broad enough to understand all the feelings i can’t put into words, to piece apart this love one by one and find the poems and proses that show what i try to relay.

maybe, one day.

there will be no half-lit desks, no caffeine-driven nights where we swap enzymes for inside jokes and call it mcat prep. no sneaking half-bitten chocolate between flashcards, no stupid grin when you finally remembered the rate-limiting step i kept forgetting.

you know i sucked at biochemistry.

we won’t hunt craigslist for a shoebox apartment in the city, a little spot tucked someplace between work and the med school we picked together.

we’ll never start a little garden on the windowsill, never measure how much care was needed for the herbs we swore would thrive on a fire-escape rail. you won’t water plants with me at dawn, sleeves still rumpled from sleep, and we’ll never fuss over whether tulips need more shade or sun.

we’ll never blow out candles on your twenty-something birthday. i’ll never call you old for being born a year earlier. i’ll never bake you a cake for the occasion; something a little ugly but still ours.

you’ll never stand beside me and talk to the moon, and i’ll never jot down the secrets you tell her—word for word, verbatim. i’d scribble every syllable so that i can remember the exact steep time for your tea, and the way monkeys make your skin crawl because of that trip back in who-knows-when, and your stubborn devotion to all things matcha and mint chocolate.

i’ll never try your last name against mine, and you’ll never call me your wife in that half-serious, half-laughing way, like it was the only obvious ending.

worst of all, i won’t hear you tell me you love me again. you won’t miss me when i fall asleep first, and you won’t kiss me when i wake up last.

your cheeky smile, your stupid sarcasm—i’ve lost them all.

and the hardest part is knowing i’ll never learn anything new about you. i’ll never get to add to the list of everything i love about you. i’ll never get to write down your hobbies and your habits—your once-in-a-while adventures.

all of our somedays are turning into nevers, and there’s nothing left for me to do but watch them go.

i hate it. i hate this feeling.

i still love you. i still dream of all that we’d do.

never is too unfair, isn’t it? too definite.

the peel came undone in one bright ribbon—sunrise held together by cautious hands. tiny suns leapt from the rind and jeweled our palms.

that night, i learned love in pieces: offer the sweetest wedge first, keep the tart one for yourself, let the pith cling if it must.

i still carry a seed like a maybe in the small pocket of my coat.

some nights the oil lifts under my nails and i remember the way your fingers brushed against mine, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

i leave the last slice on the plate, and the wanting shines through it—barely there, but still shaped like you.

i booked the vacation,

brought some family too.

but when my feet hit the sand, all i could think of was you.

is this what you meant when you said these beaches pulled you in?

the water here is warm, i never want to leave.

i sat at the edge of the shore and watched the sunset, and for a while, it felt like everything was good again.

but then i thought of you—

you beside me, watching the same sky. and my heart ached—like it always does when i think of what’s gone.

i want to bring you here. to wander these streets with you.

it’s beautiful.

the sun sinks like yolk on the horizon, and the water blurs between aquamarine blue and a hibiscus sort of red. you would have loved it. maybe you’d have taken a picture.

i didn’t.

there was no you to send it to.

so i just sat there and thought.

22 years, and i still don’t know how to swim. i told myself i’d learn when you took me back to the ocean near your hometown. i thought we had all the time in the world. i didn’t think it would slip from my hands so completely.

i still haven’t met your grandmother. i haven’t even held your hand by the sea. how could things end so soon? we had years left to chase, tides left to see.

the dusk turned dark.

the waves grew stronger,

icy water biting at my feet.

and god, i felt homesick.

not for a place i’ve been, but for a place i’ll never see. a little house by this same sea, one meant only for you and me.

maybe it’s there, in another life—where we walk these beaches together, where i’ve met your grandmother, where we share a cup of tea. i’d tell her all the reasons i loved you, and she’d tell me she accepts me.

maybe there, you taught me how to swim, because you knew i’d never learn without you.

maybe we took pictures of sunsets, arguing about whether the water was sickly green or aquamarine, whether it reflected a poinciana orange or my shitty metaphorical shade of red.

maybe i held your hand and kissed your fingertips.

maybe they tasted like salt and the sea.

maybe you told me you loved me, that you’d never leave.

and every night, you’d be there, sitting right beside me.

i’d never be without you.

never sit alone,

watching the waves crash

long after you’d gone.

the kenzo flower waits on worn wood, a piece of you i’m not ready to use.

i am both shrine and mourner—holding the remnants of you in a small, glass vessel.

to press the nozzle is to unmake the promise you pressed into my palm,

to watch the last piece i have of you fade away into an empty memory.

i hope you’ve changed somehow,

so if someone else ever gets close, they’ll meet a stranger with your eyes, with none of the pieces i loved.

because i can’t stomach the thought of another person touching the same you that i knew—

the one who used to laugh into my neck,

who called me yours like it was a promise.

i want that you to belong to me so completely that even you can’t reach back and remember how it felt.

let that small, secret joy belong only to the me who loved you first—to this selfish heart of mine.

they’d pull back with a mouthful of you.

they’d taste your laughter, your leaving,

your hands that never stayed long enough.

and if you touched me now—

you’d find i’m still soft in all the places

you once called yours.

they moved on, why can’t you?

i held those words so close they became my marrow.

tell me now, how do i untangle my heart from yours? how do i get over words like those?

the air trembles with birdsong and the world exhales green, honeyed light in every corner, and still—still—i feel the hollow you left behind.

i see you there, always, some cruel mirage at the edge of my sight. endlessly waiting, caught forever in the half-light of my wanting.

maybe you were my once-in-a-lifetime love, my forever, my (as cheesy as it sounds) soulmate.

and maybe it’s like you said—maybe in some distant universe, our hearts remain tangled, untouched by goodbyes.

but oh, how i ache for that universe to be this one, how desperately i wish your forever belonged here, with me.

in this spring.

not out of sorrow—no, the ache has dulled into something gentler—but for the echo of you that lives between the lines. your handwriting stumbles, pauses, races—like a voice unsure whether to confess or to conceal. i trace each curve and scrawl as if i could summon you back, fingertip to phantom fingertip.

do you remember how you wrote them? as if the stars themselves demanded your truth, and you, unable to deny them, spilled your soul onto the page. you wrote for the moon, but i read it too. and each word landed not in the sky, but in my waiting hands—trembling, undeserving, hungry for the pieces of you no one else had touched.

they’re worn now, these pages. folded and refolded until their creases remember the weight of my reverence. but i open them still, when the world grows quiet enough.

i miss you so much that my throat feels like it’s constricting when i think of you—so much that i find myself dreaming of you.

not the metaphorical kind, nor the kind that comes coherently.

i dream of you when i sleep, i dream that you’re waiting for me by the shoreline with arms wide open. i dream of you when i’m awake, i dream that you’re still holding me close when i’m alone.

i dream of the time when i could look to you at every turn of the ticking clock, endless hours slipping through our grasps like grains of sand in an hourglass. i didn’t know then that it could end.

i dream of you when i stop by the flower shop, imagining sending you painted pictures of their blooming buds. i dream of telling you about the new friend i made, about the new plant that sprouted, about how life has slowly changed. i dream of your endless assurance, promising that you’ll always stay.

i dream of you so often that i almost believe it’s reality.

truth be told, i don’t know if that’s romantic or pathetic. that line had blurred so long ago, whether it be through forcefully smudged ink or unrelenting waves of tears.

i dream our time hasn’t run out. maybe the somber truth is that you will always be my eden, my abode—my sweet solidarity. maybe i’ll always miss you.