The Roughest Draft

by Emily Wibberley

Nothing is ever just conversation with Katrina, no word wasted. Everything’s the setup to some ending she’s been crafting since the beginning, perfect yet unpredictable.

If everything is normal, why does normal feel this hard?

Whatever weariness was drawing on me has disappeared. It’s Katrina—she’s my second wind.

“No one creates from nothing,” she goes on. “You will put yourselves into your writing.

I forget she’s Katrina, who fled from everything we had. I only know this woman is breathtaking.

I didn’t want to make it about me.” “I wouldn’t mind if it were about you,”

His words promise a world of possibilities. I let myself imagine each one, sketching out our future like a plot without an ending.

I want to live my life entwined with hers, chasing her, leading her.

With the pink flowers rustling out Harriet’s kitchen window, the sunlight warming the room, I recognize I’m living my own life, the one I’m learning to pull off the page.

Chris was a future when I felt like I had none. Now I’m realizing I have as many futures as I want.

I want to write our lives together, K. To make each of my days a page written in your hand. To craft the chapters of my future with you in every word. Because I’ve realized a life lived with you is the best story I could ever tell.

Because in the end, the best part of a love story isn’t having it. It’s getting to keep writing.