When You Were Everything

by Ashley Woodfolk

I can pretend that the sad things in my life are just dreams I’ve misremembered.

The unshakable certainty that we are never going to be friends again.

Hopefully my past is as rewritable as I’m pretending it can be.

my chest tightens at the sight of the most random things because of how intertwined my and Layla’s lives had become;

you’re the kind of person who is obviously not there anymore when they’re not there,

“Romanticizing people is dangerous,

I can’t erase someone who insists on writing all

over my life in ink.

I need to be more careful with how I ask people about the broken pieces inside them.

What if we were fated to fall apart only to come back together again?

“And you’re fucking fantastic. Don’t let anyone, ever, tell you otherwise.”

And aren’t we all a little bit in love with our best friends?

That’s the thing about words: they can leave you both unscathed and completely gutted.

You don’t have to erase the bad things to be happy. Besides, the dark shit is important to remember too.”

That love and life are fluid. That even your heroes can make choices that fall into shades of gray.

Sartre wrote Hell is other people for a reason.

“You’re doing that thing you do.” “What thing?” I ask. “That thing where you start telling yourself a story about what’s happening instead of paying attention to what’s actually happening.”

I was in love with every place I’d never been.

This is my farewell to what we were to each other. I’m finally okay with saying goodbye to her, and this is the best way I know how.