One Day in December

by Josie Silver

I’m not a bitch though; or maybe I’m just a quiet one inside my own head. Isn’t everyone?

So my only resolution this year? To work out how to fall out of love.

I want to be platonic friends with Laurie, yet my brain is filing away her every movement, storing her up, building a map of her in my head so I can visit her every now and then in my sleep.

There’s something about living in a different place that allows you to be whoever you want to be.

I told him that there comes a point where you have to make the choice to be happy, because being sad for too long is exhausting. And that one day, you’ll look back, and you’ll not be able to remember exactly what it was you loved about that person.”

“But I also said that sometimes, rarely, people can come back into your life. And if that happens, you should keep those people close to you forever.”

That’s the thing about flowers, isn’t it? They’re lush and extravagant and demand your attention, and you think they’re the most exquisite thing, but then in the shortest time they’re not very lovely at all. They wilt and they turn the water brown, and soon you can’t hold on to them any longer.

You tread lightly through life, but you leave deep footprints that are hard for other people to fill.”

And then he looks down at me, and his eyes say all the things he cannot. His gaze holds mine as we dance slowly, and I silently tell him that I’ll always carry him in my heart, and he silently tells me that in another place, another time, we’d have been pretty damn close to perfect.