We became strangers so quickly. I never got the time of day to process it. It’s crazy to me that we used to talk every day, with regular four-hour facetime calls talking about bullshit, and now it’s been years since I last spoke to you.

 

 I still have your number saved, even though I’ll never use it. Sometimes, I’ll scroll through our messages, like I’m daring myself to feel something, anything. Some days I do, and some days I don’t. 

 

I wouldn’t even know what to say if I ran into you: I don’t think I’d be able to muster out a “hey, how are you?” I don’t think I’d be able to spit out anything at all, because there was so much that I needed to say that I never had the guts too, and now far too much time has passed. 

 

You used to be the first person I talked to in the morning, and the last before I went to bed. I replay those conversations sometimes not remembering what was said, just the feeling. That warmth, that comfort. As if hours were seconds, how you made me feel. My favorite notification, and now you’re just a follow suggestion on my social media feed. I guess I see the irony in it. 

 

I never wanted to ask you out or properly tell you how I felt because I was afraid of losing you, yet I still did. I guess what surprises me most is how clean the drift apart ended up being. No dramatic goodbye, no messy argument, no slammed doors or final, tearful confessions. 

 

Just…silence. 

 

A silence that grew roots. One day you were there, and the next you had evaporated from my world so casually that it left me wondering if I had imagined us entirely. Sometimes I try to remember the exact moment things shifted, when your replies started shrinking, when your laugh stopped sounding like it had before. It’s blurry—like trying to recall a dream right after waking up. I get flashes of it: the awkward pauses, the growing distance, and the way I kept filling the spaces you left with excuses because admitting the truth felt too painful. 

 

I kept telling myself you were busy, distracted, tired, that you felt the same way for me, and that the scenarios I made up in my head would come to fruition. I tried to convince myself that people drift for reasons that have nothing to do with me.

 

Maybe that was true. 

 

Maybe it wasn’t. 

 

And yet, even now, there are days when something small reminds me of you—a song from that playlist we overplayed, the way the sunset hits a certain shade of golden red, or someone dropping a “that’s what she said” joke, and the way you’d smile and laugh at me had you heard it—and for a split second I’m right back in those endless facetime calls and the late-night drives and conversations, feeling like the world was easier when you were in my life. 

 

But the world kept moving. 

 

We kept moving. 

 

Or at least, I’m trying to. 

 

I don’t know if I’ll ever run into you again. I don’t know if I’d freeze or smile, or if some wild part of me would finally say all the things I never could, about how I really felt for you because you deserve to hear it. 

 

Probably not though. 

 

I’d probably just stare for a second too long, swallow the lump in my throat, and keep walking. Not because I don’t care. But because I’ve learned that some people leave in ways that aren’t dramatic—they just stop showing up, and you learn to stop waiting.