you.

I’M TRYING TO GET OVER YOU, BUT IT’S NOT WORKING. Everywhere I turn, I see you. My breath catches in my throat and I almost say your name, but then the figure turns around and it’s a stranger.

But how different are they, really? How well did I know you compared to these random women on the street? I have no clue how to decipher the truth from your fictions. Is something less true when spoken between lies? Do words lose their meaning when doused in alcohol or tangled in some other drug?

Your eyes, those were not lies. Your skin. Your touch. They way your fingertips whispered on the back of my neck. The way you fell into me and let me carry you. Those rare moments when your body softened and you released your burdens.

But maybe it had nothing to do with me. How often were we actually sober together? Does our love even count? Maybe your feelings were only chemical concoctions. Maybe you never loved me at all; maybe you fell in love with your own chemistry.

Who did I fall in love with? A ghost? My own projections onto the shell of you? Who was I talking to all those times I thought I was pouring into you, when I told you secrets I never told anyone? What does it mean that I finally felt safe? What does it mean that you said you did, too?

Evie, I don’t know if I miss you or my fantasy of you. I remember what you look like, how you felt in my arms; I remember the physical weight of you, the tangible things, the things that could not be faked. But there is something else, a kind of smoke, the weightless stuff that fills you up—that is what I’m not sure about. There’s a taste of it on my tongue, a residue of memory, but I don’t know if it’s you or myself I am tasting.

It’s not even a question of whether or not we were good for each other. It’s a question of whether we existed at all.