the apartment we won’t share

Sunlight streams through a window I wouldn’t have the chance to peek out of, illuminating dust motes that dance in a future I won't live through – no, not without you. The apartment – where Christmas lights still hang messily, a mistletoe we kissed under for four years in a row, a cruel echo of dreams and promises whispered – I guess I’ll never get to know how the comfort that our couch would’ve brought. Does the chipped mug on the counter still hold your fingerprints? Do the walls whisper secrets of laughter we never shared, of fights we never fought, of the promises we never kept?

The dog we won't have will haunt every park I will ever walk through. It will have your goofy grin, chasing after our dreams that are leashed to a past we can't revisit. The inside jokes, that was once our secret language, will lie dormant in the dusty corners of my mind, and there will be filthy jokes in the back of my head that won't burrow back in. The daughter we won't raise – a child with your eyes and my smile, will be forever frozen in the nursery with drawings of stars and gloomy air of what-ifs.

All of this is because everything I wasn’t was everything we needed.

The demons in your nightmares will be someone else’s burden to bear. Someone, a soul yet unseen, will bear the weight of those nightmares, their touch a cold press against your chest beneath the tangled sheets. While my demons will stay in me and they will never leave. To banish them would be to sever a piece of myself, a piece forever intertwined with you. I will keep my window open for you to come home to the apartment we won’t share.