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This morning, I thought about you.

It is becoming a rarity these days, to be honest, and I only find myself thinking about you in fleeting moments before I realise that I no longer am compelled by your aftertaste.

I take out some memories of us, lying unattended in places inside me, I have stopped visiting. I carefully remove the dust from the edges and see us for what we were – beautiful.

In this moment, I am younger again, the same age when I told you that I loved you and I think in the half-light that moves past my window, I can see your smile again.

Are we supposed to unlove people in order to be able to fully love someone else?

The answer, like all answers, lies in the wait, in the spaces between years that speak only of the things that cannot be touched any more.

I wrap myself in these memories of you and realise that I no longer feed off them. Instead, I cherish what they are, what they stand for, what they embody.

Several summers ago, you and I, loved. And lifetimes aren’t enough to forget what that tasted like.

I think this is how we love again. By accepting how things are, and knowing that there are homes we built inside each other that will remain abandoned, in the name of a love, that couldn’t be.

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Pritha is a high school teacher who teaches English Literature. An avid reader she wonders and finds ways to challenge the limitation of her knowledge and understanding of literature and life every time she opens a book. She scribbles to straighten the myriad, incoherent thoughts that do not allow her to rest in peace. She loves to travel and anything musical.