Near Miss

by Haley Warren

She looks at me like I’m something—not nothing—but she’s not quite sure what. As she should. Because I think I look at myself like that—I’m something, not nothing—but I’m not quite sure what either.

Everyone lightens at once, like whatever my feelings have done to weigh them down, gets picked up off their shoulders and put on mine.

“I just don’t date.” “Too committed to saving lives?” Trying to save my own, I think.

but I think she’s probably in my veins now and even if I bled myself dry—she’d be all that was left.

Kind of like the me I used to be before—but I think I might prefer this version because he knows her.

He hangs up before I can tell him that it might not exactly be a life he’s saving, but it’s a piece of me.

But if someone was going to etch a date of birth on my tombstone, I’d ask them to get it right down to the very millisecond she whispered those words out into the world. I love you.

We don’t say anything again for a very long time, but there’s beauty in silence sometimes, when all it really is, is being seen.

That boy came along, and he lit you up like the sun.” “Like the sun,” I repeat with a tiny smile. Beckett is the sun, I think. Bright and beautiful. Warm and lovely. Keeping the weight of a whole planet’s atmosphere on his shoulders.