When We Were

by Diana Elliot Graham

He always asked me to tell him, never wanting to assume.

“Thanks for meeting me.” “I can’t imagine my life if I hadn’t.”

We won’t be who we were. But we will both be who we should.

You can love a memory without loving the person. And as I look at him, I know that the love we have for each other in this moment is that.

I don’t want you to be miserable and lonely, I want your happiness, which you have, Arden.

“You were the love of my life also.” “Arden.”

“I used to think that maybe you were just the right person but at the wrong time. You know? Like maybe there would be a time for us. That there would be other chapters, but you would eventually be my epilogue. But I was wrong. I think you were the right person, at the right time, and we can blame the miscommunication trope all we want, but like you said, none of it was enough.

I wondered what it would be like, to look at my own life, to wonder about my own love story, and no matter how happily ever after I am, the last weeks made it dangerously easy to romanticize an alternative.

but it was the epilogues we both wrote where we had happily ever afters. It just wasn’t singular; we didn’t share one. We had happily ever afters, apart.

To keep our strolls down memory lane on the well-lit portion of the street so as to not get lost.