things i never said.

You once told me about a dream.

In it, you had married someone else, and you were happy.

You told it to me naturally, like a passing thought on an ordinary day.

What I never told you was that I had had a dream too.

Only in mine, it was the two of us.

I was quietly carrying a future I hoped for, while you were able to picture one with someone else.

Maybe the strangest part was that we were both dreaming.

Just not the same dream.

When you said you didn’t really see us ending up together, the room went quiet.

I didn’t get angry.

I didn’t argue.

Maybe the hardest part wasn’t losing a future.

It was realizing I might have been the only one imagining it all along.

Sometimes I wondered how easily someone else could become a possibility while I was already being told that I wasn’t one.

I know you’re allowed to meet people.

I know you’re allowed to have friends.

I know you’re allowed to choose whoever feels right to you.

I just didn’t know what to do with the feeling of being replaceable.

You had things from your past that made you careful.

Distance and online conversations made everything feel uncertain.

I understood why you protected yourself.

I understood why you kept your guard up.

I understood why you were afraid.

I just wished you could believe maybe I was different.

If some of the things that felt special to me had happened before…

why did they feel so different to me?

(I still don’t know.)