epilogue

i can’t tell you the story of our undoing

but i can tell you how it begins

a three-word novel falls from her lips

and it goes as follows:

“i love you.”

i can tell you that she was a writer,

so i was entirely used to pretty words rolling off her tongue

but these words were different,

entirely bare of metaphors and symbols and candy-coated phrases

powerful in their wholly unpolished state.

and i can tell you that maybe her way with words was what drew me in so quickly

not like a moth to a flame,

but more like a moth already in flames

all instincts for self-preservation having burned away

independent streak dying with the embers.

so maybe we changed with the weather.

maybe the comfort of her arms dropped below freezing

as we slipped under the ice

and when we came back up,

we could finally see one another for what we truly were.

i can tell you that when it rains, it pours

that the soft weeping of the skies often threatens to drown my eyes in mascara,

and i remember the way

she used to call them “shining blue orbs,” and

they were grey, but it wasn’t a correction i felt inclined to make.

i can tell you that i am still waiting

for the day when the silence between us

begins to feel less unnatural

less like a rebellion against the very order of the universe, and

more like an old scar fading to white.

i do remember the very last time we spoke,

but i won’t ever repeat the contents of that conversation —

i intend to keep them for myself,

to hold tightly onto them

because they are all i have left.

i can’t tell you the story of our undoing,

but i can tell you how it ends

a three-word novel falls from her lips

and it goes as follows:

“i forgive you.”

#alcharlotte