in another timeline, you listened to the last song on the mixtape

the beginning of a memory of an almost-story

they met in a moment that didn’t even bother to introduce itself.
no lightning. no epiphany.
just two people in the wrong hallway of the same building.
she blinked, and there he was—
already a memory pretending to be a beginning.

he looked like a boy who loved the idea of love
but flinched when it touched him.
like someone who romanticized depth
until someone actually saw him and it got too loud.
too real.
too much like being known.

she didn’t fall in love, not really.
it was more like
she looked at him a little too long,
and the gravity did the rest.

it felt quiet.
like laying down on the floor and letting the house burn around you.
not painful at first.
just warm.

she gave herself slowly,
like unwrapping something fragile in a room full of people who don’t know how to hold things.
there was no grand confession.
just showing up.
over and over.
even when he didn’t knock.
even when she wasn’t sure he’d notice.

and he—
he lingered like a fever.
not enough to kill you.
just enough to make everything taste wrong.
he stayed in that purgatory between “almost” and “i’m not ready,”
and when she asked if he felt the same,
he said things like “timing” and “stillness”
and “i care about you too much to hurt you,”
like that wasn’t already a kind of wound.

he didn’t leave in a dramatic way.
no slamming doors. no midnight screams.
just—
less.
less texts.
less touch.
less wanting.

and she knew.
she always knew.
but she still sat there
with her heart cupped like a match in the wind
hoping he’d change his mind.

but this kind of almost-love—
it doesn’t get a wedding playlist.
it gets a voicemail you never delete.
it gets “i hope you’re okay” two years too late.
it gets buried under people who don’t ask about it
but feel it in the way she flinches when they say, “tell me about your last love.”

so she accepted their fate.
not with rage.
not with bitterness.
just with every version of herself she tried to hand him.

maybe in another timeline
he catches her.
maybe he learns how to choose her
before she learns how to forget him.

but not this one.
here,
she disappears quietly.
like the last good song on a mixtape
you made for someone who never listened to it.