'What no one tells you about being the woman who comes after "the one that got away".'

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We never met, but I see shades of you still.

Have heard your voice in the bathroom, on a midnight call I'd rather forget; heard your words on his tongue when he said he didn't love you anymore but did not want to lose your friendship.

When the three of us know that you were never friends.

Saw you on an old wallpaper that he forgot to delete, and tried not to think about how he's never had a photo of me there. See you still, in empty lube bottles in bottom drawers and a gift you gave that he only has a photo of.

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Over the span of a year, he built a trust with me that could not be shaken. An honesty that I came to know was so much sweeter than the sweet nothings of past flames.

Over the span of a year, I knew him with more certainty than the freckles on my nose or the ache in my shoulders.

In one day and one conversation with you, when I looked in his eyes, a stranger looked back at me.

Was that the person he was with you? Or was it the person you turned him into? Maybe it was you — a ghost swimming in his eyes that possessed his senses.

A first love can do that.

A first love can hold onto your heart like an old stitch that disappears with time. But a scar remains. One we can reflect on and reminisce about fondly. Sometimes it holds on like a noose. A ball and chain dragging behind, causing you to trip up as soon as you're in a steady new rhythm.

Being in that kind of young love is filled with firsts and brimming with possibility. The person you share those memories with will forever have part of you. The person who comes after must love everything else and accept that they will never have those firsts.

I love him for everything he is, the light and the dark, and all the used parts. All the parts you had first.

There are many words written about being that girl. The first one. The one that got away.

You are the muse of a thousand songs and a million more love stories. Painters have immortalised you on canvas. Poets have told your story through the ages. Once, men went to war for you and warriors fell to their knees before you. Gods left their heavens for a taste of your lips.

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There are not many words written about us — the ones who come after you. The ones who pick up the pieces and make new memories, not better but new; the ones who build something beautiful out of the remnants left behind in your wake.

I am not you. I do not want to be. But sometimes I wish I had the parts of him that you still own; the first fingerprint burned into his heart.

Sometimes, I want to be the muse.

But I was chosen to be the forever.

Feature Image: Getty.

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