If only

“It’s mortifying to be the one who remembers.” – anonymous

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Author: Jason Thomas aka Xxodia

Voice: Lyrical, Introspective

Theme: Guilt, Lost Love

Perspective: First-person

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It’s 12:45 when the cabin door clicks open. Autumn rushes in—cool, edged sharp as glass. It brushes my cheek with a tenderness I have no right to. Beyond the glass, the world is muted gold, the sky pressed low, as if bracing for what’s coming.

A year has passed since my eyes last traced the lines of your face. I imagine time has redrawn you, sharpening edges I once memorized in the quiet hours. Perhaps I wouldn’t recognize you now—perhaps that’s mercy. After all, I left your heart in ruins, the trust you gave me scattered like glass I didn’t bother to sweep. No warning. No explanation. Only absence.

The wheels of my carry-on hum against the terminal floor, each step heavier than the last. My chest is a locked vault, crammed with words too late to matter. I think of the day I left—how my absence arrived like a sudden storm, tearing through the life we built without giving you time to board the windows. I told myself I was sparing you, that it was cleaner to vanish than to stay and rot. But the wind outside bites like a reminder: some debts the years cannot forgive.

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My pace quickens before I notice. The crowd dissolves into a blur—faces smudged, voices drowned by the drum of my pulse. Somewhere ahead, I tell myself, there’s the curve of your lips, the light in your eyes that once unraveled me. I cling to that hope like driftwood, desperate for the belief that somewhere, in some hidden chamber, you’ve saved me a place. But hope is a practiced liar—it whispers promises it never plans to keep.

The coil in my chest winds tighter. Beneath it, a smaller voice gnaws at me: What if I am not welcome? What if your smile has withered, or worse—found another? The truth could gut me where I stand. And maybe that’s why I move so fast—not to find you, but to outrun the moment truth catches up. Perhaps it’s arrogance, thinking I mattered enough to leave a wound. Perhaps it’s the hope that even in my absence, I remained unforgettable.

The sting of my own betrayal has never left. Not just to you, but to myself. I told myself I was leaving to protect what little good we had left, blind to the fact that I was wielding a blade without control. I cut deeper than I knew. I underestimated the force of my fall, how it would ripple outward, dragging everyone within reach into its undertow.

Friends faded. My reflection grew harder, meaner, speaking in a voice lined with regret. The excuses I once honed have dulled into hollow echoes, crumbling under the slow rise of truth. Truth that doesn’t flinch when it tells me: I didn’t leave, I abandoned. I didn’t step back, I vanished. I stole your choice, your closure, your right to even ask why.

Now I sit in the back of a car, the city bleeding past my window in streaks of amber streetlight and fractured headlights. Each turn feels like confession. Each mile like penance. The hum of the engine is steady, but my thoughts race ahead, tripping over themselves toward a moment I’m not ready to face.

A left turn. The streets grow quieter, lined with bare-limbed trees shifting under the wind. My fingers twitch against my knee. Every passing streetlight flickers across my skin like a warning.

The car slows, the tires hissing softly. I lean forward, drawn to the familiar outline of a block I used to know like my own hands. Cracked sidewalks. The faint memory of our shadows moving in sync. And then—

You.

Not alone beneath the streetlamp of my foolish imagining, but standing at your front door, your body folded into the arms of someone else. The embrace is unhurried. Intimate. It speaks in a language I used to know, but no longer understand. My breath stops. The sight carves through me clean, deep—like glass through water.

The car idles. My hand moves to the door handle, and before I’ve thought it through, I’m stepping out. The night air strikes colder than any season could make it. Across the street, the edges of the world blur. Only you are in focus—your head against his shoulder, your face turned away. My chest feels both hollow and unbearably heavy, as though the weight of the last year has chosen this exact second to collapse inward.

The door closes behind him with a muted click, leaving you alone in that cocoon of closeness I can’t enter. My feet stay planted, but every nerve screams for movement. The cold creeps into my hands, but I won’t shove them into my pockets—it would feel like surrender.

Then your head lifts. Your gaze sweeps the street until it catches me. For a heartbeat, nothing exists but that thread of recognition—no wind, no sound. Your posture shifts, a small stiffening. You’ve been blindsided.

His hand rests lightly at your waist, unaware of the storm passing between us. You don’t smile. You don’t frown. You simply look—long enough for me to catch a flicker of something unnamed before it vanishes behind the stillness of someone who’s learned to guard herself.

The street between us yawns like an ocean. I know I’ve been standing here too long. My throat tightens, my rehearsed words shriveling before they can take shape.

Your eyes hold me just long enough to remind me of everything I’ve lost—and the damage I left behind. I want to cross, to call your name, to shatter this into something it was never meant to be. But the way your shoulders settle toward him tells me the truth: I am no longer where you live.

I turn. The pavement grinds under my shoes, each step heavier than the last. The air slices sharper, filling my lungs with something colder than weather. I keep my head down—not to hide from you, but to hide the collapse in my face.

A block away, the restraint breaks. My vision blurs; streetlights smear into gold tears. They come without pause, as if every grief I buried chose this night to claw its way out. My shoulders shake, my breath fractures. I walk faster—not toward anywhere, but away from the sight of you in his arms, away from the ruin I’ve made of us. The city moves indifferent around me while I unravel in its shadows.

Somewhere between one streetlamp and the next, I understand there will be no grand reunion, no cinematic forgiveness. Only this—the weight of my own choices pressing into my ribs, the echo of your absence etched into each step. I am not walking toward healing, but deeper into a wilderness of my own making. And maybe that’s the truest punishment—not losing you, but knowing I opened the door and let you go.

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“Sadly, sometimes it’s too late. That’s the thing about time: we cannot get it back.” – Anonymous