If It Makes You Happy

by Julie Olivia

Everything meant…nothing.”

I miss…noise. It’s so quiet, being alone.”

Somewhere in the last month, we’ve become inseparable, and I don’t know when it started. It’s like how, one day, the leaves are bright and green, and then, suddenly, they’re flittering to the ground in dull browns and oranges. The seasons of our relationship changed without my consent. Now I don’t know what to make of us.

“Because I’m really confused about us and I’m trying to sort through it,” he confesses.

I want to talk to him, but I don’t know what I’d even say. I miss talking with him so much that it hurts.

I loved him in that moment. I didn’t know it yet. But, oh, how I did.

Through another choked exhale, he says, “Don’t get on the plane.” “What?” “Don’t get on the plane, Michelle.” “I don’t—” “I love you.”