It’s been a year.

Are you the same girl I used to love? The same girl who seemed to share my thoughts for so long? The one I never could find words for?

You know, you look so much the same that it hurts. And it would be so easy for me to fall into step with you again, as though you never took away my heart with you when you left.

Sometimes I see you and I still catch my breath, but are you her? Are you the girl who took my breath away a year ago? You seem the same, yes, but so strange.

Are you the girl I used to know?

It’s so easy to forget everything that happened, so easy to slip back into the past as though it were the glassy surface of a summer lake. It would be so easy to put those memories back on like a warm coat.

I wish I could do it.

I wonder if you know how much you changed me, how different I am because I met you. And how I can never go back to the way I used to be.

Are you different too?

Sometimes I see you and I want to call out, “Hey, have we met?”