I Will Never Regret The Time I Shared With You

I remember the way my hair dye used to stain your pillowcase. Faint hints of pink and purple swirled around us while I wondered if it would ever get any better than this.

My head perched on your shoulder as we both drifted off to sleep. You held my hand and I knew, there would never be anything quite like this.

Your arms were wrapped around me, but I felt nothing. Your words were trying to fix the things that your body could not. You turned your back on me, and I swore you never looked back. I spent that night awake and realizing that we could never be anything more than this.

We would never be more than the bed that was too small for all of the secrets shared between us. We would never be more than the silence that said more than any of our words ever could. We would never be more than two strangers just trying to get by in this life. We would never be more than that night.

You can’t take back the words you never said. You can’t take back the way you looked into my eyes and made me realize that it was over. You won’t come back because you never had a home here. I was as temporary to you as my ever-changing rainbow of hair is to me. And yet, despite it all, I promise you that I would never take any of this back.

I still wonder if the dye really washed out of your pillowcase. Maybe you just told me that to make me feel better. Maybe it was your way of telling me you were finally ready to let all of this go. Or maybe, some small trace of it will always be there as if to say, “Even when you have left a place or a person, you will never be able to erase the way they made you feel.”

I hope every time you see a rainbow, you think of me.