December 3, 2024
We found a bar that night, half-empty, playing old songs on the speakers. They didn't let us in because of my Canadian drivers license.
She told me stories about growing up in a town where no one left, about people she no longer talks to. I liked to trace the lines on her palm when she wasn't looking. I wonder if she noticed.
I'd look her in the eyes and tell her that we're two spirits bounded, tied to a million lifetimes. She told me she understood, but I think we both knew she didn't.
We started spending days together, like two kids playing at being adults, drinking coffee that turned cold while we talked about everything that wasn't important, and nothing that was.
She'd light a cigarette, and I'd pretend I wasn't counting the seconds between each inhale.
I never told her that I hated the smoke. It felt like a confession I wasn't ready to make.
The stars we saw that night weren't in the sky. They were in the spaces between our words, in the quiet moments where everything felt fragile and real.
To the nights that end with whispered confessions and the kind of silence that feels like understanding.
I wonder if memories know they're fading? If they feel the edges fraying, like an old photograph left in the sun.
We spent whole lifetimes in moments, until all the paths erased themselves again.
We rewrote our stories in reverse, unlearned the moments that made us, unspoken the words that broke us.
The heart is stubborn, but it remembers the shape of things, even when the details are gone.
Those moments were real to you, to me, they matter. Did we make good memories?