Same Time Next Summer

by Annabel Monaghan

“If you’ve loved someone your whole life, it kind of makes sense that you’d love them forever.”

I can’t shake the feeling that the town itself remembers us.

You two walking in here the same way as when you were kids, the leaning. Ginnie always remarked about how you two walked together, sort of leaning into one another. We were like that too.”

If it were me—and it was me, so I know—I’d want you to be everything you could be. I wouldn’t be putting rules and constraints around you, I’d just love you and let you move through the world the way you wanted to.

If I’m going to stay out here, I am going to have to get used to feeling him in the air, hearing him in the sound of the gulls. Now that I’m listening to my heart, I realize he’s been right there all along anyway.