Where do we go from here? Psh. I don't know. I mean, it's not like I can just un-know you...right? And in knowing you, I can never not love you. But this actually might just be it...that one proverbial straw too many and you loving me back just doesn't seem plausible. 

So instead, I will love the nostalgia of our conversations after you leave. I'll fold the scarf you left in my truck with a soft hand and embrace the scent of you long after it fades away. I will find comfort in knowing that your picture..your voice is only seconds away in video files I’ll eventually stop watching. I will love you in secret, in the middle of the night where the shadows of my room remind me of nights we stayed up talking until your roommate walked in. 

And one day when my son asks me about girls, I will tell him about you. I will show him cardboard sheets of chalk long gone and whisper your name into his ear. I’ll tell him of when we first met and how I thought you were beautiful. I’ll tell him about me sitting at your bedroom desk, you underneath your blankets...listening and open, your hands touching and searching my rugged exterior, caressing my face as you told me the stories of your life. Your fears. Your insecurities. I’ll tell him about that New York accent and how hearing your laugh was a strange lullaby of sorts that calmed a sea of inner turmoil. Your quiet anger and frustration with my clinginess...your acceptance of it. Your heart. Your innocence when you asked me to sleep over for the first time. Your clumsy hands and racing pulse when you gave me the gift of being your first time. 

I will tell him of the semester I fell in love with a girl from — and the ways in which we taught each other how to live. I will reminisce on the times I sat, head bowed with tear-stained cheeks, praying to God that we’d work. And maybe we will. Maybe we already have. I can’t keep you as my "now" anymore but I still like to think of you as my "someday" and that someway we’ll find our way back to each other. 

But if we don’t, please know that you healed me in ways that are impossible to explain. You used your voice to stitch my wounds, word by word and the scars aren’t so ragged anymore. I may not be able to love you in the way that I want to and I may never love you like I once did but please know...this was real for me.

So from here...where do we go?
Psh..I don't know.
All I know is that love won't ever be the same.