On His Way Back To Me

by Brittany Bacinski

To the lovers I lost and the lovers who lost me

When you love someone, you crave them.

I couldn’t always compare every man I met to what Paul. And I had, if I did, I’d never find anyone. No one compares. What Paul and I had ended, and I wondered if that’s how it was supposed to go. I wondered what would happen if you tried to revive a dead love. Or worse, what to do with a love that you thought was dead but isn’t and would likely never be.

I guess I just thought you’d make your way back to me by now.”

Even when he wasn’t mine, he still was.

“You know why people smoke?” he says, walking in front of me. I shrug again and shake my head. I stuff the cigarette between my two fingers. “Nope. Not really.” “Grief.” He taps on his chest. “Grief is stored in the lungs. People smoke when way deep down in here, they’re sad. Grief and sadness directly affect the lungs. If we are unable to express these emotions or are being overwhelmed by them, it will weaken the lungs and compromise their main function: respiration.”

We knew it would be a forever kind of love. Even if it didn’t make it to thirty years alive, it was impossible for our love to ever die.

And then I wonder, what do I have to lose? What if it’s real?