If He Had Been with Me

by Laura Nowlin

Sometimes I am disappointed with love. I thought that when you were in love, it would always be right there, staring you in the face, reminding you every moment that you love this person. It seems that it isn’t always like that.

I love him in a way I cannot define, as if my love were an organ within my body that I could not live without yet could not pick out of an anatomy book.

This is friendship, and it is love, but I already know what they have not learned yet; how dangerous friendship is, how damaging love can be.

“Finny,” I say to the lonely dark. “Finny. My Finny.” My breath shudders and my eyelids close against the pain of loving him. Finny. My Finny.