My Best Friend

He didn't arrive with thunder.
No grand gestures, no fireworks.
Just a steady presence
when I needed one.

He learned the shape of me
without asking me to soften the edges.
The sharp corners, the quiet retreats,
the way I sometimes pull away
just to see who follows.

I'm not easy to love.
I know this.
I've said it out loud,
through a half-closed door.

He heard me,
and stepped through anyway.
Just to sit beside me
and say, I’m here.

And somehow
that was everything.

I'm still learning
how to be loved like this.
Still surprised
when he reaches for my hand
like it's the most natural thing
in the world.

Like it's home.

One day soon
I will stand beside him,
put a ring on his finger,
and promise out loud
what my heart already knows:

I choose you.
Always.

Even on the days I'm difficult.
Even when I doubt everything else.

Because you held me
when I was hardest to hold.

Because you stayed
when I tried to push you away.

Because somehow,
you make it feel
like I deserve
to be loved.

And you've taught me
to trust this.

 

Tomorrow

Her eyes keep counting exits,
hands held tight in her lap.
She sits where she can see the door,
like the room might turn on her
if she lets her guard down.

People say things to her.
Kind things, probably.
Gentle platitudes with careful faces.
I've heard them all before.

She nods
the way you nod when words
have stopped meaning anything.

I want to tell her
I know.

I know how the world goes dim
when the past barges in uninvited.
How nights fracture without warning.
How the ceiling becomes a movie screen
for scenes you never asked to replay.

I know the sudden terror
in ordinary moments.
Footsteps.
Voices.
Hands that move too fast.

The way memory
refuses to stay in the past
like they promise it will.

I want to sit beside her.
I want to tell her
it wasn't her fault.

Not the freezing.
Not the silence.
Not the part of her
that just wanted to survive.

But she wouldn't believe me.

I want to tell her that one day
the nightmares will thin out.
The flashbacks will lose their teeth.
The fear will loosen its grip
with each quiet exhale.

I want to tell her
laughter will come back
like a cautious animal
stepping into a clearing.

But she wouldn't hear me.
Not yet.

So I sit across from her
with all these words
burning holes in my chest
and hope that somewhere inside her
beneath the rubble,
beneath the noise,
beneath the long echo of what was done,
some small stubborn part of her

is still listening
for a voice
that believes in tomorrow.

 

Second Chance

Rain braids the night
into silver threads.

At the far end of Harvard Bridge
a figure stands beneath the dim
halo of a streetlight,
that old familiar Red Sox cap
tilted low against the rain.

For a moment I hesitate,
almost turn around.

Once before,
I mistook fear for clarity,
let our story loosen from my hands
like a balloon slipping skyward,
vanishing into distant clouds.

Wind moves through the street
carrying the quiet debris of memory:
a kiss caught in a stairwell,
coffee cooling on a windowsill,
the echo of footsteps
walking away too soon.

I remember the gravity of that choice.
How absence grows its own architecture,
walls built from regret,
doors that only open inward.

I step forward.
Each footfall
breaks the thin ice of hesitation,
shortens the careful distance
I once mistook for safety.

Running now,
I see the familiar shape
of his smile waiting beneath the rain,
a harbor light,
steady,
unafraid,
warm.

There are a thousand things
I want to say,
things I didn't say then.

They all dissolve
in the quiet space between breaths.
I let the truth arrive simply,
like warmth returning
to cold hands.

Rain hides my tears,
and a small, impossible miracle
stands in the glow
beneath a Boston streetlight.

If you love someone, set them free.
You know the rest.

Thank you for coming back.