Member-only story
Life After You
I let you fade with time.
My friends said it was high time I move on, but days ago I was still tracing my fingertips across your picture as if I could conjure you with just a few stray thoughts.
“It’s not healthy,” they tell me. “She’s already moved on. You have to give up the ghost.”
Give up the ghost? Lose these memories of you? No, no, no — not when I can still remember late nights when we stared up at the ceiling and talked about nonsense past midnight. Then we’d tangle in our sheets, getting lost in each other inch by inch, till we forgot about things like sleep and work and normal life. It was always like that with you: reality faded away as if it were a bad dream we could banish from our thoughts.
And I’d bring my hands to your face, you’d close your eyes, and I’d think of how much of a gift you were.
And you’d sigh so soft, I’d kiss your eyelids, and you’d whisper that you loved me more than life itself.
I might have sat there with all the muddled memories — craving, cascading, collapsing — if I hadn’t been on Instagram one night to see the proof for myself. After scrolling through my feed, I hesitated before I searched for your name. You were too kind to block me. You still thought that maybe someday we might be able to be friends again.
