When Love Moves On

To say it’s been awhile would be an understatement, because a momentous amount of time has passed since your last encounter. It will be years since that first time but the feeling will be just as raw. The nerves, the slight discomfort feeling that interrupts the safety of your routine life. Love will remerge after years and it will disrupt your balance, just like the first time you exchanged glances.

There will be obvious discrepancies. Love won’t appear as youthful; there will be some lines, some grey hairs even. Love will be older now but you will feel that same bliss you did in adolescence. 

You will doubt your appearance, adjust your clothes, battle with your hair to be tame and check the mirror, hoping you are worthy in this moment. You’ll catch the reflection of your own aged face and you will momentarily feel nostalgic. Has it really been this long? The regret is visible in your reflection. You’ll quickly divert your eyes and look back longingly. You will ponder why you let this happen, why you let time amass for this long. You will wish, you will wish you could go back. You will look fondly at Love now and wish you had done, said, fixed whatever failed. 

But you didn’t then and now you are here, pained by past mistakes and seeing the results of your loss.

You think it can’t be too late. A simple hello would be polite. Just a few words, just a few minutes, you tell yourself. A few minutes will not mask your guilt, but you tell yourself it will. So you build the courage to approach Love. You slowly walk, rehearing a hypothetical dialogue in your head. You imagine you will casually bump into Love, act surprised, give some compliments and maybe even hug. Maybe you’ll go for coffee and share stories. Maybe this will lead to more encounters and you keep building but there is no causation, nor correlation. But you are too lost in built up hope. And just when you near, you see Love turn and stop. 

You realize the true price of your loss. Love is surrounded by another. Love laughs and then embraces this another. You halt and take a deep breath. Love moves forward and away from you, again. And you fittingly began to walk back. Love moved on and the visible proof hits you hard in the chest. You will take deep breaths, and brisk away. And just as raw as the sight of Love in the beginning, the loss of Love will be equally devastating. Love moved on, but you still bask in regret and hurt. Love learned to love again, but you didn’t or couldn’t, cursed to be the few who only ever love once.