Sounds Like Love

by Ashley Poston

“Pineapples to cherries, but yeah. If you spend your entire life comparing everything to the best thing you ever made, then you aren’t gonna find joy in any of it. You’ll just be unhappy that they aren’t like the original thing, you know?”

“It’s easy. You know you’re in love when they are the first person you want to hear in the morning and the last person before you go to bed. My mom told me that once, and I just never forgot it.”

“I don’t know who I am without my anger at my dad. At myself. I

Was that what grief did? Spoil every soft and good thing it touched?

What’s wrong with me? If I love him, shouldn’t I want to marry him? If I know I want to be with him forever, shouldn’t I want forever to start as soon as possible?”

“Not necessarily. Forever looks a hundred different ways to a hundred different people. Why do you want to take the most boring route?”

“Besides, all I heard was that you wanna spend forever with me. I don’t care how that forever looks. As long as it’s with you? That’s all I need.”

We were all made of up memories, anyway. Of ourselves, of other people. We were built on the songs sung to us and the songs we sang to ourselves, the songs we listened to with broken hearts and the ones we danced to at weddings.

“I understand why. It’s all frightening. We are all frightened. We just want to live every day as full as we can, because the only thing that makes grief worse is regret. And I don’t want anyone to regret anything—especially not your father.

“And then I wonder when I’m gone, will my life have meant anything at all?”

“When you asked if I regretted giving up on music—I lied. It’s easier to give the perfect answers than the messy ones. Because of course I do, heart. I regret it so much I can’t talk about it—any of it. I can’t remind myself of the person I used to be, who wanted to be a yelp into the void…because all I am is a sigh. What did I do in this life that mattered?”

“And I was scared,” she admitted. “I think that’s what I regret. I regret being scared, because I thought I had time. I always thought I had time.”

“How do I forgive my past self for all the futures I didn’t become? I don’t know.”