saw an old picture of us on my phone today. 2 years ago, today. oh. that's right. two years and two days. the very first time i met you.

it used to be one of my favourite parts of the story. seeing you, knowing you were real. finally understanding that you had this entire life you lived trailing behind you, and a life laid out in front of you that i had a place in, and that we stood right there in between the two, sandwiched, guiding both our lives forwards, together.

you opened your front door and stared me dead in the eyes and we just stood there, and the wind was whipping my hair against my face and my eyelashes were melting every snowflake that landed on them and you froze with your mouth agape and your hand still tentatively gripping the doorknob and we stood there. and we stared into each other for what felt like an eternity. and it was beautiful.

i remember what you told me when i wrote that. that i ruined that moment for you, i ruined every moment for you. so i stopped paying attention to the world after that, stopped looking for nuance or meaning or small reasons to like things. figured i'd be better off just missing all detail. better off not loving anything else too hard.

you still pop up every now and again. your name's the first thing to appear when i type the first letter of it. there's backs of heads that look like you, there's songs that still reek of you, there's silly things i want to tell you that i have to forget ever happened so i don't think too hard about them. but what a chore it would be to wipe you all away, all these whispers that sing to me softly. how could i ever ignore them.