We all have someone we never really speak of. We take their names and the marks they leave on our tender skin, the cracks they inflict on our snappable bones and we hide them.

We hide them under the new faces we meet that smudge theirs from memory, the experiences we take under our belts, and the days we live that put that person further and further into our past.

But that’s the problem with hiding things, especially people.

They’re still there.

They will always be there and no amount of faces, experiences, or crossed off days on a calendar can erase a person once they have written themselves into your story.

I can’t erase you from my story, no matter how much I want to.

It all started with the rain. The rain came and you were a tree that dug in its roots, past the mud and slush so the impending winds couldn’t topple over your bark. And when the wind came, you raised your branches and fanned out your leaves so that the smaller trees behind you wouldn’t have to take so much.

But the rains kept coming, the storms grew stronger, and your roots were weathered shallow by floods and muddy water. People like you and me weren’t made to endure so much, to bear both storms; the ones outside as well as the ones inside of us.

Despite it all, you never faltered and that, that is why you’re a part of my story. I saw how you endured and I found solace in the thought that maybe I could emulate you. This was your first gift to me.

And then I learned that in the moments you forgot your hardships, you were filled to the absolute brim with starlight and sunrises. I found that like life itself, you were equal parts pain and beauty. This was your second gift to me.

You and I, we were drawn to the stars like moths to a lamp. We flutter our wings higher and higher, lopsided and zigzagged in our desperation to reach for something we deemed better. Never have I seen wanderlust look so beautiful than it did on the glistening rings of your wings.

And the moment the sun rose and we stopped fluttering around as moths, I would look at you and I would get that sweet taste of marmalade sunrises on my tongue. I was reminded that the passing of the night time was beautiful, and so were you.

And that’s how the two of us lived. We flew to the stars at night, tasted the morning sunlight, weathered the storms of the day and we were happy. Until I wasn’t.

The sun is sinking and the sky is morphing from red to orange, turning violet to blue and eventually, black. The stars will receive the darkness they need to shine and once again, the wings on my back will itch for me to fly up and touch them. But I think it’s time to find them on my own now.

It’s not your fault I grew dependent on you to give me a sliver of strength in my own storms. Or that I let myself follow you to the stars you wanted to touch, knowing deep down I had my own constellations to follow. It’s not your fault I started to equate the heartwarming taste of marmalade sunrises with the taste of you. And it’s definitely not your fault you never noticed me ruining myself by trying to be closer to you.

So this is me unearthing you from the grave I continuously throw dirt into, the grave that lies in the graveyard of all the other things I don’t like to speak of. I know now I can’t bury your existence or throw away the gifts you placed in my palms. You’ll be with me forever, written as a part of my story.

My life right now is full of “maybe’s” and “someday’s” and I’m slowly coming to terms that you are one of them.