The air is still at 2 in the morning with nothing but the cicadas filling this empty silence. The moon gazes down at you with a forlorn smile, and you think that there’s nothing more you can say than, “I’m sorry.”
They rehearsed the words better in their head. “And yet,” they whisper, “I’ve come to regret nothing.”
All at once a tidal wave of grief bears down on your sore shoulders and you wish for time to retrace its steps so your story could begin from when you broke each other’s hearts, then spent days in deep longing and tenderness, before you forgot all about each other forever, and you think that somehow it would have been a better ending than this.
“Maybe in another lifetime then,” is all you manage to say. And for the first time that night they look at you, eyes glistening, and you will later come to understand that it couldn’t have meant anything else but forgiveness.