almost, still

“we never had a name for it just late replies that felt like arriving, and silences that felt like leaving, and neither of us brave enough to call it what it was. i think that's the part that stays. not the losing you, but the never having you to lose in the first place. we were close enough to ache, too far to call it love, and i keep writing about it because unfinished things don't know how to end quietly. somewhere you're living a life i'm not in. somewhere i'm still checking if you ever were. maybe that's the whole story two people who almost happened, and one of them still writing like it isn't over, because it never really started.”