Far From You

“She was in love with you,” he says. “And I don’t think she got to tell you, did she?”
My heart lurches, seizes inside my chest, fluttering to life at the words I’ve always wanted to hear. I shake my head. Tears spill down my cheeks.
“She loved you. She wanted to be with you. That’s why she told me about herself. She said she’d made her choice. It was you. I think it was always you.”
I look away from him, out through the blinds at the lights of town, and he stays quiet, a comforting witness, letting me cry.
Letting me finally let her go.

I want to remember everything because it’s the first time.
Later, I’ll remember everything because it’s the only time.

Mina likes to play with fire.
But I’m the one who gets burned.

If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.

like he’s a masochist and I’m the embodiment of pain.

I kissed him like I already know the shape of his lips. Like I’ve mapped them in my mind, in another life. Learned them from another person who shared his eyes and nose and mouth, but who is never coming back.

All I could think about is how Mina’s scared of the dark, and how messed up it is that I’m letting them put her in the ground.”

Mine is wrapped up in Mina, magnified by her, defined by her, existing because of her.