Reminders of Him

by Colleen Hoover

Her face is a work of art. I wish there was a picture of it hanging on a wall in a museum somewhere so I could stand in front of it and stare at it for as long as I wanted. Instead, I’m just getting in peeks here and there, admiring how all the same pieces of a face that make up all the other faces in the world just seem to coordinate better on her.

I want good things for her because it seems like she hasn’t had a good thing in a long, long time.

People say you fall in love, but fall is such a sad word when you think about it. Falls are never good. You fall on the ground, you fall behind, you fall to your death. Whoever was the first person to say they fell in love must have already fallen out of it. Otherwise, they’d have called it something much better.

I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I miss you all the time, even when we’re together.”

So, you decide right now, right here. Are you gonna live in your sadness or are you gonna die in it?”

“Regret keeps you stuck on pause. So does prison. When you get out of here, make sure you hit play so you don’t forget to move forward.”

There was before you and there was during you. For some reason, I never thought there would be an after you. But there was, and I was in it. I’ll be in it forever.

“We go forward,” she says. “That’s it. It’s that simple. I forgive you and you forgive me, and we go forward together and give that little girl the best life we can give her. Okay?”

Maybe it doesn’t matter whether something is a coincidence or a sign. Maybe the best way to cope with the loss of the people we love is to find them in as many places and things as we possibly can. And in the off chance that the people we lose are still somehow able to hear us, maybe we should never stop talking to them.

Now that I’ve forgiven myself, the reminders of him only make me smile.