Forget Me Not

by Julie Soto

I want to love what you love, even if it’s extinct.

“If you want to move forward with whatever this is between us, you don’t have to worry about me backing out. You may think everything ends one day, but you haven’t had ‘everything’ with me.”

She snorts a laugh, and I almost say it. I almost say I love you. But I don’t know that she wants me to. I think we could be together for forty years with twenty kids, and she still wouldn’t want to hear it. So I hold her until her breathing evens out, and whisper it soundlessly, like a prayer.