This Time It's Real

by Ann Liang

Words just move me. A beautiful sentence will sneak under my skin and crack me open the way a phrase of music might, or a climactic scene from a movie. A well-crafted story can make me laugh and gasp for breath and weep.

I guess my point is that I do believe in love. Really. I’m just not convinced that kind of love could ever happen to me.

I wrap my arms around my body. Exhale into the frigid air. “I miss a lot of people.” And this, I think, is my ultimate fatal flaw. Missing people who don’t miss me back. Clinging on to strands of string that shouldn’t mean half as much as they do. It takes so little for me to love someone, yet so long for me to move on.