In another life
When we met again, it was as if time folded in on itself, the years collapsing into a single breath, and I stood there, suspended between the person I was when we loved each other and the person I became after we broke apart. The air between us felt heavy, not with awkwardness, but with the ghosts of everything we’d been. Every touch we shared, every word whispered in the middle of the night, every tear we shed for reasons we barely understood—they all came rushing back, thick and unrelenting, like a tide I could neither fight nor flee from.
I looked at him, and for a moment, it felt like we were back in that familiar rhythm, where words weren’t necessary to understand what we were feeling. His presence stirred something deep inside me, something that had been dormant yet never truly gone. Even after all the pain, after all the hurt we inflicted on each other, the love between us had always remained—quiet, enduring, waiting beneath the surface like embers in a fire that refused to die. And in that silence between us, I felt the weight of his struggles, the demons that had torn at him, and the anger that had bruised us both. I knew he fought those battles every day, as much as I fought mine. And even as those battles broke us apart, I could never forget the way we once protected each other, fiercely, like two people who had nothing left to lose except one another.
We talked, our voices low, each sentence feeling like it held years of unresolved heartache. The weight of our past lay between us, but there was no anger, no bitterness. Just sadness. A sadness that we couldn’t quite put into words, that lived in the spaces between our conversations. When we cried, it was as if the tears weren’t just for the years we had lost, but for the future we would never have, for the dreams we had woven together, only to watch them unravel. We kissed, and in that kiss, I felt everything we had been, all the love, all the passion, all the unspoken promises we never had the chance to fulfill. And as he held me close, I felt something inside me break, slowly, painfully, as though my heart was being ripped from my chest. It was the kind of pain that runs so deep it becomes a part of you, the kind of hurt that lingers long after the moment has passed.
He is leaving for New York, and with him, he takes a part of me that will never return. But he was always more than just a lover—he was a piece of my soul. His laughter, his pain, his silence—they live in me, woven into the very fabric of who I am. No matter how far he goes, no matter the miles that stretch between us, a part of him will always remain within me, like an indelible mark left by love that once burned too brightly to be forgotten.
In another life, I imagine us whole. I see us in a place where we are free of the weight we carry now, where the battles that tore us apart have never been fought. In that life, we dance beneath soft golden light, in a home we built together, where love doesn’t hurt, where it doesn’t scar. There is no anger, no distance—only the warmth of the sun filtering through open windows, and a dog sleeping by the fire. Our days are filled with laughter, our nights with whispered stories and promises we never had the chance to keep in this life. In that other life, love is soft, unburdened, and we are free to give ourselves to it fully, unafraid of the storms that once threatened to break us.
In that life, we dance through every season, hand in hand, no longer haunted by the demons we once knew. Our home is filled with quiet joy, with sunlight and books, with the life we once dreamed of. There, in that world, we are the best versions of ourselves—the versions who never had to say goodbye, who never had to carry the ache of love lost too soon. In that life, we are whole, and there is no distance that love cannot cross.
But in this life, I must let him go. I must watch him walk away, knowing that the love we shared will never be enough to bridge the years that lie ahead. As he steps out of my world and into his new life, I feel it again—that slow, searing ache, like my heart being torn from my chest, a piece of me leaving with him. And yet, I know, some stories must end in this chapter, in this life. Even as every part of me wants to hold on, to beg for one more moment, one more kiss, I know our love, in this world, has already written its last line.
But in my dreams, in the quiet corners of my heart, we are still dancing. We are still together, beneath a sky that knows no sorrow, in a world where love is enough to keep us from ever having to say goodbye.