Distant pitter pattering of rain hitting glass and the occasional burst of sound from people sitting nearby were unwelcomed invasive cracks into my frozen daily life. It had been months since I could say that I had felt anything that made a laugh bubble up like a brook of crisp and clear water. It had been months since I felt warm, the many layers and muffler unable to trap the heat I tried to force into my body with eat hot drink I forced myself to purchase. I knew it was temporary, it would always be, once the mug was empty the heat ebbed away much like you had. 

You were radiant, a sudden firework and spark that made me lift my gaze from the ground.

I had not looked around me in detail in months, I had not fully taken into account how much time had passed. The reflection in the mirror showed my hair, once neat and styled was wispy and limp, much like my mental state. Eyes that used to be called warm and inviting, like hot cocoa in the winter, now dejected and indifferent—like bare, skeletal trees in a wintery tundra. I had not realized how forlorn I looked, how much I had given up in myself and the world around me. I had lost weight, the bracelets I used to cherish and hold up to the summer sunlight to make glint like stars during the daylight barely held by my wrists. I was certain that if I were to flick my wrist the bracelet would slip off and fly out of my reach, like you.

"I'm sorry."

I never knew how I let myself never speak those words when you needed them the most. If I had would you have turned back to listen to what else I had to say? Would you have sighed and told me to try again later, to let us sleep this off and let our thoughts settle? I wish I had the answers but I did not. Funny how time works, you could not do something once yet you could regret it for eternity.

"I want to love you over and over again. You will hate me over and over again."

I knew this in my very bones, even if my eyes that were slowly starting to take notice of my environment were seeking answers the truth was there would be no answer from you. I had given up on us when I had not apologized, your fuming back like a slammed door. I knew you would not hear my words and grant me your forgiveness even if I screamed it at the top of my lungs. My throat was so used to silence that as I tested a few words under my breath self-consciously the sound was hard to distinguish. It was neither whisper nor mumble, it resembled a attic, dusty and forgotten.

If I searched for you tonight, would I find you? Too much time had passed, you could have moved on far away from where I could ever cross your path. Certainly you rather not see me ever again, I fully understood that, like a ghost you hoped you had left behind. In my current pitiful state I surely was more specter than the one you once loved. It would only anger and hurt you to see me, after all why bug you after all this time? What could I possible have to say now when the train had left the station months ago? 

"I don't know."

My feeble voice, no more than a rustling of dried Autumn leaves against cold grey concrete, supplied. You had deserved the world, and though we had been wonderful, we were both like fireworks during the summer: fleeting and all-consuming.

I had been so frightened to prove that we were over—to find my number blocked when I called or to have the door unanswered when I knocked—that I didn’t dare try. My finger hoovering before dropping to my side with a frustrated sigh. Why was I such a coward? If I had been braver would you have allowed me to say that apology that had been stuck to my tongue?

"It's too late."

The best I could do was leave you to your own life, after all with all the time that passed surely you had found things worth looking forward to. Did you go on that trip you told me you had considered with your friends, the one I might join you on if we had not argued weeks before? Did your smile create those lovely creases on your eyes that you hated, saying it made you look older yet I adored? Was your laughter like a chirping bird, clear and bright, awakening every sense of my body and filling me with a soft glow like sunshine amidst a tree canopy? I hoped I had not erased these things from you, selfishly like waves lapping at the shore, destroying beauty out of a desperate need to have it all for myself.

Maybe some things were better as a memory, nothing good lasts forever, not when you are the first one to look away. Did you wait for me, for that call, for the knock on the door? Perhaps you did, once. I let you down in more ways than one back then, so it is unfair for me to see how you are now. So maybe I will leave it at that, a firework that after the light dimmed only smoke trails remained. 

At least we were beautiful, once.