Don’t bother (be unkind)

I wish I could have seen it

She likes to catch glances of other lives.

Classes continue and her degree is a breath outwards (relief and what now?) and she feels like maybe she has come full circle.  She gets a better apartment and smiles and laughter doesn’t get boring and she can see herself with a different ring and a terrace and a new set of memories. 

Michael emails her sometimes with silly announcements and touchingly desperate questions.  When he tells her about Jim getting married it isn’t a shock or a blow (a pause and what might have been isn’t fair after all these years) and she gives her congratulations (I’m a part of your past, letting you go).

She could watch for him everyday but she’s half afraid (she’s walking on a delicate web).  Nervous glances and inevitable distance isn’t what she wanted for them.  Lane (the new boyfriend) rubs her hand when she says nothing and it’s gone and this is the present and she’s happy.

Wishing they had taken a chance is a memory (we’ll always have Paris, in a dream)

(Her first real painting goes up in her studio and she squeezes his hand when he laughs at the beauty in a stapler)