Before We Were Strangers

After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half?
M

Once there was a you and me
We were lovers
We were friends
Before life changed
Before we were strangers
Do you still think of me?

The present is our own. The right-this-second, the here-and-now, this moment before the next, is ours for the taking. It’s the only free gift the universe has to offer. The past doesn’t belong to us anymore, and the future is just a fantasy, never guaranteed. But the present is ours to own. The only way we can realize that fantasy is if we embrace the now.

“ ‘Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.’ ”

Silence, as if the air were sucked out of the room and we were left in a vacuum, wordless, our eyes glued to each other.

we memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.

I was done crying and I was done apologizing.

“I was more heartbroken than angry.”

My timing was perfect, if not fifteen years too late.

I had been closed off for a long time, and I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine the future because I was still stuck in the past.