When I first realized I had fallen in love with you, my first instinct was to pretend it had never happened. When frantic sledgehammers raged in my chest at the sight of you in the distance, I called it a false alarm. When my cheeks burned and my skin trembled at the whisper-soft brush of your hand against mine, I blamed the stifling air in the library. When I stood alone at the center of a crowded ballroom, searching for you with the desperation of a starving man looking for bread, I told myself I only missed you because I had no one else to dance with.
And when I lay facedown against a tear-soaked pillow with Phoebe Bridgers in my earbuds, I convinced myself that my broken heart was just a figment of my imagination. I swore I was mourning over an empty casket because I refused to accept death. It was easier to believe I was crazy than to admit that I was in love with someone forbidden.
But beneath the fortress of pretenses I constructed, my soul knows the truth. Our love was stupid, fleeting, impossible – but it was love, and every minute was beautifully, tragically real.
I knew from the beginning that we could never be more than a fool’s dream. Your heart was never mine to hold, and soon you will vanish into the golden horizon and become nothing but a memory. But for a single moment, I glimpsed heaven in your eyes, and my soul will not rest until I find it again in someone new.