I saw you for the final time that day.

I saw you for the final time two days ago. On my way to work along the busy city street, the usual symphony of horns blaring, people shouting, others muttering under their breath. The street was a sea of white and blue collars, clicking heels and shuffling feet. The suffocating stream of movement, trying to manoeuvre your way through the thick crowd, just to get into another one that seemed to be going the same way as you. And it was that morning that I was rushing to work, that I paused.  I hadn’t seen your face in years, but there you were. An ensemble of memories and emotions too overwhelming to consider all at once. Shock rendered my mind both empty and overflowing with memories I had failed to bury. I considered turning away, or ducking my head, not that you would recognise me. I looked nothing of the children we use to be. You looked different too, aged by life; mature and somewhat weary. I wondered suddenly what might be troubling you, if anything was at all; you always seemed to escape misery, evasive as it tried to reach out and get a grasp on you. I didn’t know it was the final time that I would see you. I couldn’t look away. Your image an absorption of my past, of you.

People streamed by, all busy or pretending to be, and I was nudged onto the edge of the sidewalk near the towering buildings, finding myself standing on the lip of a stair leading into a dreary structure. I stood there, trying to look over the crowd, see if it was really you. After all these years…

You had built me, and broken me, and I had allowed you to because I loved you. I still do. I always will. You are entangled to me, nothing will change that. Nothing can remove the carvings of your name on my bones; when they bury me they’ll see your name, among others. I told you, you will always have a home in my heart. I’m not sure if you believed me at that point, that day when I think we both realised we no longer fit in each others lives. How strange it was to see you again, surprisingly feel nothing at all, nothing of the bitterness that use to have a hold on my heart.

At one point in our lives we were so closely intertwined that we depended on each other. Like two seeds planted too close together to grow securely on their own. We had to part, or we would never see the sun, we would never have enough of life. So I’m not sure if we drifted or splintered, or simply outgrew, but I will never not care for you.

There was a time not too long after I stopped feeling numb, that I realised how much I missed you. I realised how badly I wanted you back in my life; sometimes. How badly I wanted that life, where everything was easy and innocent and weightless. We had made a promise once, to remain together forever. Pinkies interlocking beneath a cloudless blue sky. Hearts full of hope, and joy, and all the wonderful things that seem to slip away as you age. I do not miss you anymore, but I still care for you. I hope you know that. After all we have been through together, I hope you at least know me enough to know that you are never truly alone so long as I walk this earth. I think you will always be the person who has a piece of my heart, their name etched into my bones. I think, you will always feel like home, even after years of moving on.

You edged closer on the sidewalk, walking at a pace akin to those around you, only slightly faster than everyone else, like you always were in life. One step ahead, outrunning everything ill intentioned, in favour for the light that only you could see sometimes. But even when I couldn’t see that illumination ahead, you wouldn’t leave me behind. When I was sixteen and sad and tired from a life I had not yet lived, you would not leave. And although that changed over time, and people came into your life who shadowed me, I am still grateful for it, for having had someone who refused to leave; even for a little while. I can still remember you saying, ‘I’m not leaving her’, when the others tried to drag you away, because I was too miserable to stand being around. You did leave me in the end. But I suppose I left you too.

I’m not sure if I wanted you to look up from the pavement where you seemed to be set on staring.   I don’t know if I wanted to see your eyes again, meet them across the crowd, or if I wanted to look down, duck my head, get on my way and hope you didn’t recognise the brown haired woman across the street. The woman who knew pieces of you nobody else did. The woman who you had shared a large amount of your life with, had planned even to still be sharing it to this day. Oh, how things change; how strange that they must change at all.

The smell of citrus from your small townhouse garden, and the warmth of your family bakery still surrounds me sometimes. When I’m driving past an orchard with the windows down, and your lemon tree is again at my fingertips, your laugh not too far off in the fog of my memories. When I walk into anywhere that smells like coffee and freshly baked bread, and my skin lights up at the caress of that tender warmth. I can still remember the layout of your childhood home, I could trace my way through that house with my eyes closed, even today.

You were my world once, as I was yours. But for the last four years we have been orbiting, I imagine now that this moment was the eclipse. Where we meet in the vast vacant and occupied space between us. Not truly meeting at all, coming nowhere near each other really. But for a singular moment in the grand expanse of time, aligning.

Someone bumped into me from behind, knocking loose the books in my hands. I swore quietly as the man rushed off without so much as a look back. I bent down to pick them up before they become the subject of someone else’s interest or got swept up in the flurry of moving feet. With the books gathered in my hands again, I looked up, searching for the familiar face amongst the crowd, but all I caught was a glimpse of red hair, disappearing into the swarm of people, swallowed by the current.

I didn’t feel much like I thought I would if I ever saw you again. I didn’t feel bitter, or sad, or that numbness I had learnt to associate with losing you. Instead I felt something warm spread through me because you looked healthy, you looked happy, or at least okay. And in the end, after all these years, that’s all I could really hope for; that you had found your peace in the world, and if not yet, than at least you were looking for it.

Unknowingly, I saw you for the final time that day, and there was no bitterness building in my chest. Just echoes of a past life and a past love. You will always own a part of me, that I cannot deny. I have tried to erase you, thinking it was a way to heal, but it only made me hurt. Now I realised we were never meant to be nothing, we were always going to melt into each other, and then burn right through. And those scars remind us of who we are, where we came from, the people that we use to love, and those who loved us. Sometimes when I was feeling bitter without you, I thought it was a waste to spend all those years with someone just for them to eventually walk away. But you were not in my life just to leave. You were my best friend for a long time, but more than just that, you were my support and a piece of my soul. And just because you are no longer, does not mean that those years didn’t matter; doesn’t mean I will ever care for you any less. I can outgrow places and people. I can change shape and manifest, just as the seasons of life are forever changing. But my roots will always remain; intertwined with those that I have loved and lost.

I saw you for the final time that day, and watched as a piece of me dissapeared into the busy city street. A piece of me forever with you, getting lost among the many lives of others.

I hope you are happy. I really, truly do. Because after all these years, my heart finally feels full without you.