Older

by Jennifer Hartmann

After all… I would only be getting older.

The only antidote is believing in your resilience. Every challenge is a chance to prove your strength.”

She watched the movie. I watched her.

Now I know. Now I knew what it felt like to really play with fire. And I was damn certain, that any day now, I’d go up in flames.

I needed the lie right now, so I allowed it to soothe me.

“I wanted it. I wanted it more than I wanted air.”

“Every moment with you fucking hurts.” His voice was pure grit, words cracking and breaking. “Every moment without you…hurts so much more.”

A beautiful haze of wrong and right, nothing and everything, could be, wouldn’t be, shouldn’t be. Is.

I stared at him, awestruck, dumbstruck, lovestruck.

“Falling for you has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” I confessed through the anguish. “Everything else? Painful. Torturous. Difficult beyond belief. But loving you…” The anger died out, flatlining to a dead pulse. “Effortless.”

“I was lost when you found me, and I’ll be lost when you leave me.”

It was fascinating the way human beings tended to living things; how we could nurture something so fiercely, all while knowing it was going to die. Just a little more water, we’d say. Better sunlight. A silent wish for a few more good days. But it didn’t matter. Every hearty, thriving thing carried with it the certainty of an expiration date. Nothing lived forever. Even love. And still, we allowed it to bloom. We breathed life into it, while simultaneously whispering our last goodbye.

There was only an endless summer, ripe with possibilities, unbreakable friendship, and memories of a love story that would forever keep me warm.

The night I met you, you sat down in a cold lake and said, “You’re welcome.” I said I didn’t thank you for anything and you replied with, “You might one day.” You were right.

A fuck-you to the universe that we were right and they were wrong.

The morning glories had slipped from my ear, now splattered at our feet in broken buds. Mourning. Glory.