Only Mostly Devastated

by Sophie Gonzales

I fled. I fled like a bigot dodging the concept of equality.

Sorry, I stopped texting you because my precise strain of “gay” was only temporary. Kind of like salmonella.

God, what I wouldn’t give to live in a fairy tale, sometimes. Or even just a romantic comedy.

The world would keep moving, and tragedies would happen, and beautiful things would happen, and we’d invent things and grow and Aunt Linda would never see any of it.

And life was too short to play chicken with something as important as the person you loved.

Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn’t worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren’t a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.