Author's note: An exercise in first-person point of view. Not based on real events.

I still think about you sometimes, in that roundabout, not really missing you way. Little things remind me, and then I'm drawn back, and it's all I can do not to remember. The things you said, and what you did, and what we planned to do together. We wanted to move somewhere far away from here, live in the middle of nowhere, with no one else, just us and the cats and a tire swing in the front yard. I'd work on my writing, and you'd run a business from home, doing God knew what, but you said you'd manage to do something, somehow (convincing me that if others had done it, you could do it too). We planned what we'd name the kids, if we had any, and if not, what we'd name the cats, what we would plant in the garden, just what your business would be. We dreamed.

We were great dreamers, you and I. There was so much we dreamed of doing—and we did none of it. Is that why you left? The dream faded to reality, and life found both of us moving to the city after college, trying to find jobs and make ends meet, with no time for writing or running businesses from home; no time for dreaming, fragile what-ifs. I dealt with it; I found a job working in a department store, behind the perfume counter; it didn't pay much, but it paid enough, and that was all that mattered, that I was able to contribute to rent, put food on the table. You found a job working in some office downtown, doing filing; we both promised each other that our jobs were temporary, we wouldn't stay with them forever, but after I found something new, you were still at the office, doing clerical work, and it killed you.

I could tell it killed you, just from the way you acted when we were alone together; the way you complained about the things you did, what you were forced to do in order for us to eke out a living. I told you to quit; you countered that we wouldn't be able to make rent if you did, and I said we should move out of the city, leave the state, go somewhere else, where we could both find new jobs and you wouldn't work day after day at a job you hated.

You refused to listen, and after a while, it drove us apart. I couldn't stand to see you miserable, you couldn't stand to see me doing something other than writing, we were driving one another crazy. If we hadn't split when we did, we might have done something stupid—gotten married, had kids, found out ten years later that it wasn't what we wanted, and then where would we be? I don't miss you; I don't think you miss me, either. It was for the best; we agreed when we split that it was for the best.

But I still think about you. When John comes home, with ink on his hands from whatever project he's just been working on, smelling like paper, I can't help but be reminded of you, and it takes me back. I loved you. I know part of me will always love you, and the thought doesn't bother me. I don't wonder if you feel the same way about me, I don't wonder what could have been. I'm married now, and from what I hear, you are too. I'm happy with what I have, with the life I've made, and I only wish you the same.

I loved you. I planned on spending the rest of my life with you. But you can't build a life together on dreams and dreams only—life needs a foundation more solid than that—and so when I think of you, it is not wistfully, nor regretfully, more fondly, for what we had, and what being with you taught me.