The Wake of Almost
The things we never said have a way of waiting.
They told me not to return to Blackthorne House. Not after what happened between us there. But tomorrow Ruth is getting married, and there are things one should not carry to the grave without speaking aloud.
The attic is just as we left it: the chest of holiday ornaments, the battered chaise, the cabinet we swore never to open again. I should leave. I should wish her happiness and go. Instead, I find myself turning the little brass charm on my wrist—the silly thing she gave me before we even knew what we meant to each other—and the ache becomes unbearable.
The key is still in the cabinet door. I shouldn’t remember that. And yet, my hand turns it.
Inside lie the relics of a life we almost had: the dried rose from Paris, the playbills, the letters. And then, at the bottom, the photograph of us. Her head on my shoulder. The future we will never claim.
Something in me gives way—like a river held too long behind a dam. The memories surge through me, faster than I can contain them, overwhelming and ungovernable. Like water finding its course, they reach every place I have spent years trying to keep dry.
My hand slips. The frame strikes the floorboards, and the photograph tears clean down the middle—exactly as we lived: forever together in private, forever apart in daylight.
And there it is—the skeleton of it all. The truth we locked away because we were frightened of who might see it. The truth that cost us the only life that ever felt real.
She will say “I do” tomorrow. And I will remain here, in the wake of almost.
Artwork by Síle
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