The one who narrated eggs

I have to admit that loving you changed me, and that losing you changed me too. Maybe losing you most of all. I didn't know who I'd be on the far side of you, and now I more or less do, and I owe a little of that to you, which is a strange thing to find yourself grateful for.

For a long time I picked anger, because anger is lighter to haul around than grief and you can put it down quicker. I told myself a clean story where you were wrong and I was right and the whole thing was simple. It wasn't simple. We were two people lugging around old wounds and calling them our personalities, bumping into each other in the dark and blaming the other one for the bruises.

I still loved you, under all of that. I loved the version of us that wound up cooking at midnight because neither of us had eaten. I loved how your laugh could crack a bad mood of mine right open. I loved the future I'd quietly built in my head, even the parts of it that never got to happen.

And here's the strange part. I don't think about the fights. I genuinely thought I would. What comes back instead, uninvited, usually while I'm standing at the sink, is you at the stove at one in the morning, sleeves shoved up, narrating a pan of eggs like it was a wildlife documentary, and me laughing so hard I had to sit down on the kitchen floor.

That's the version I kept. Not because it's the fair one. Because it's mine. You can't have it back, and I wouldn't hand it over if you asked.

I'll never send this and you'll never look for it. But I hope wherever you are it's a good night, and that you're narrating eggs to somebody who has to sit down.