𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗬: "Somewhere We Almost Lived" by Kathleen D. Yambot

 

Published by: Shaina Pajarillo 

Date Published: July 30, 2025

Time Published: 9:00 AM

Category : Prose

Theme: Unspoken goodbyes and the grief of imagined love.

I used to imagine the small, ordinary details of our future together. A key resting on the kitchen counter. Your voice coming from the next room. The sound of a drawer closing, the hum of a fan, the casual mess of two lives tangled in comfort. It wasn’t a fantasy—not in the grand, sweeping sense. It was quieter than that. It was what I thought we were building, slowly and inevitably.

Now, I grieve not the absence of you, but the absence of everything we were supposed to be. I mourn the mornings that never came, the ones where I would’ve made coffee while you stayed in bed a little longer, the sleepy murmurs, the mismatched mugs, the mundane that was supposed to mean forever. I grieve the laughter that never echoed in our imagined space, the quiet comfort of your hand reaching for mine in the dark, the arguments we never had, the apologies we never got to whisper into each other’s skin.

And it haunts me, how deeply I feel the loss of something that never even happened. How my chest tightens at the thought of you choosing a life I never got to be part of. How I keep returning to the same imagined walls where we almost lived—only to find them crumbling, unreal, never mine.

Some things aren’t lost because they were taken—they’re lost because they were never really yours to begin with.

There won’t be an apartment with our names on the buzzer. No place where you complain about the neighbors or I burn the toast. No late-night grocery runs, no half-finished Netflix shows, no arguments about laundry. All those tiny, sacred moments that form a life—they’ll belong to other versions of us, in stories we won’t live out.

And yet, I don’t resent you. I don’t even resent the silence that followed after it all quietly fell apart.

I think that’s the hardest part ; realizing it’s possible to miss something you never actually had. To carry the ache of a farewell that never found words, only quiet acceptance. To cry over a future that only ever existed in the soft corners of your mind.

Maybe the apartment was just a metaphor for everything we could’ve been if timing had been kinder, or if love had been more equal on both sides. Maybe you were home for me, even if I was just a stopover for you.

Wherever you end up, I hope your place feels warm. I hope someone turns on the lights for you before you even walk through the door.

As for me, I’ll keep the space open in my memory, just for a while longer—not because I’m waiting, but because it mattered.

Because you did.

And that’s enough.