Maybe the chance we never got is the cliffhanger I’ll have to learn to live with. Maybe our story is the one that never gets to be rewritten. Maybe this is the only universe we ever get to exist in.

And maybe you and I just don’t get a chance to make this right.

Maybe the words that we said don’t get to be anything but broken. Sharp. Cutting. Maybe I’ll never learn to swallow my heartbreak and keep it from jumping out of my chest and causing collateral damage. Maybe there are just some people we don’t get to love forever.

Maybe your eyes don’t actually look like the color of cold coffee long after the ice has melted. Maybe they’re just brown. Maybe you’re not the only one that will ever make me feel safe, loved, and okay just as I am. Maybe it’s dangerous to assume that only someone else can make you feel those things at all.

Maybe I’ll always have just a little bit too much to say to you. Maybe there’s something about you that will always make poetry bleed out of me.

Maybe some people cross our paths to break us. Or maybe they come into our lives for no reason other than coincidence. Whatever the reason you were here, maybe I’m glad you entered my atmosphere at all. Or maybe I’m not.

Because maybe we’re better off as strangers. Maybe one day your name will mean nothing to me other than as someone I used to know, your syllables fading into the backdrop of my life as I strive towards a tomorrow without the hope of an us in it.

But maybe I don’t want that at all. Maybe I just need time. Maybe you do, too. Maybe I just need to let you go slowly until the freefall doesn’t sound so scary anymore. And maybe you just can’t be the one to catch me.

And maybe, just maybe, one day we can be friends. Actual friends. Just friends.

And maybe I’m okay with that.