Happy Anniversary

I am writing to you again, just to say happy one year. Happy one year to us: the beginning, nearing to the end.

Happy one year to me, to the falling apart, to the healing.

An entire year without you, I wouldn’t call it ‘happy’ but at least I learned to be without you. I’ve learned how to reminisce fondly, without bursting into tears. I’ve learned how to write about you, in hopes of keeping what we had alive, without actually wanting you back.

To this day, I haven’t forgotten you but then again, how could I? I hope you still wonder about me, and I hope you don’t regret us.

Because I don’t. But in some ways, I’m glad it ended.

In some ways, you led me to the boy I love. The boy I’ve been with for nine months now. The boy who actually makes me happy.

He doesn’t know I still write poems about you.

He doesn’t know I still think of you, not lovingly but habitually – when I walk by the restaurant you love, the bowling alley where we discovered how terrible we are at bowling, the café where you work.

He doesn’t know his face merges into yours for a brief moment when I’m intoxicated. Maybe I still associate the fleeting feeling of the drunkenness and daze with you, and then you start to fade and I let you go once again.

I’ve stopped begging you to stay.

A year, and everything is different. I want to know what’s new with you, how you’ve been, if you still work at that café, if you’re still terrible at bowling,

And if you realized that it’s our anniversary.