We laughed once and once we wept.
We needed nothing from each other, and we owe each other nothing now.
What was, was. Nothing takes that back.
It was short, and somehow it goes on being the longest thing in me.
We are different people now.
There was a moment, once, when we truly met.
Then somewhere along the way we tried to keep a flame burning in a wet place. The wonder is not that it went out, but that it lasted as long as it did.
So it is right that we leave each other.
We could have kept pretending. Many do.
To let you go is to give you back to your own life.
I carry no grudge into the years.
I do not need anyone to keep what is left of us alive.
I hope the same is true for you.
And when we meet again, in this life or another, it will be good between us.
Really good.
Not the meeting of two people held together by what could have been.
But the bare, unguarded thing. The thing itself.
Honesty is worth more than a friendship that has stopped being one.
The time we did not waste together, that quiet, unspent thing, may be the rarest gift one soul can ever leave another.
