Love’s Fleeting Embrace

We met on a Tuesday. Her smile was like fresh paint on a clean sidewalk—bright, perfect, unmarked by the world’s weight. I should’ve known it wouldn’t last. Nothing that white stays that way for long.

Three years we stood together. Side by side. Seamless. The kind of thing people pointed at and said, “That’s how it’s supposed to be.” We believed them.

Then the cracks started.

Small at first. A missed dinner. A late-night call she didn’t mention. The way her laugh sounded different when she was talking to someone else. I told myself it was nothing. That every relationship weathers a little. That we were solid.

But pavement doesn’t lie. Once the fissure starts, it spreads. Slowly at first, then all at once. You can fill it, patch it, paint over it—but you can see the seam. You know where the break is.

The last time I saw her, she was standing on the other side of that gap. Same street. Same city. But the space between us might as well have been a canyon.

I wanted to reach across. To say something that would pull us back together.

But some things, once broken, don’t mend. They just sit there—two pieces that used to fit, worn down by time and traffic, close enough to remember what they were but too far apart to be whole again.

I turned up my collar and walked away. The rain started, washing the streets clean.

By morning, even the white lines would be gone.