LITERARY | No One Talks About The Crossfire

Friends became divided territories.

Families became closed doors.

And we were left standing outside places that once welcomed us,

holding gratitude we never got to express and goodbyes we never properly said.

I didn’t mean to cause a handful of casualties when I pulled the trigger on us.

I didn’t mean to aim the crosshair at anyone else, but heartbreak doesn’t know how to stay in its lane.

Even if there was "closure" between us, the shots had already been fired.

I lost the sound of your mother calling us to eat, urging me to take another serving like I had always belonged at that table. For a while, she made it feel like I had always been there.

Your father will probably forget me in sections—first my voice, then my face—until one day,

I am only a vague story you mention in passing.

He nods politely like he always did, struggling to remember the girl I was.

Your brother, who barely acknowledged my existence, might even feel relieved by the quiet my absence left behind. I can’t blame him for that. Not everyone is meant to like the temporary people in someone else’s life.

Your friends tried harder than I expected them to, and I saw that. They made room for me in areas that were never really mine, even when we all knew I didn’t quite fit in.

Your cousins—I never wanted them to become memories. I wanted us to grow older together, laughing at the same jokes at weddings and birthdays and holidays we once assumed we’d share. Instead, I'm becoming someone they used to know. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to them again, as if speaking would make the separation real in a way silence could delay.

At home, my family still says your name in the present tense. They ask about you carefully, like they’re stepping around broken glass, afraid one wrong word might reopen something I’ve already tried to stitch closed. I can see it in my mother's expressions that she misses you a lot. My father remains slightly silent about it, but I could tell too. Somehow, you were becoming their son in the same way families grow around new people. I hadn't considered that unlearning you meant watching them lose someone too.

I never got to stand in your living room one last time and thank your parents for letting me be part of their family, even if it was only temporary.

You never got to stand in mine and do the same.

That unfinished kindness sits in my chest like a debt I’ll never get to repay.

But I don’t regret you,

I don’t regret us;

if anything, I feel lucky that our lives ever crossed at all—that for a time, out of everyone in the world, we chose each other and built something that felt like a home.

You used to tell me you’d change,

that you’d try harder,

that you’d adjust for me.

And maybe you meant it.

And maybe I should've told you more that I believed you.

But I always knew those promises were meant for someone you would love more easily—someone who would fit into your life without all the friction we carried.

That’s okay,

you deserve someone your brother will naturally like,

someone your parents will brag about with pride,

someone your cousins will grow close to without effort,

someone your friends can stay up with until three in the morning playing Valorant without it ever feeling forced,

someone who won’t leave behind this quiet wreck of shared spaces, confused relatives, and unanswered goodbyes.

I’ve made peace with losing you in the romantic sense. I no longer imagine your hand in mine or your name beside mine in plans that stretch years into the future. What I grieve are the smaller things—the casual belonging, the shared routines, the way our lives folded into each other so naturally that everything outside of us felt like an extension of home.

And here I am, mourning people who are still alive but no longer allowed in my life.

Maybe I was just a necessary chapter in your story—a lesson that helped you understand what you truly wanted, or what you were never meant to keep.

And maybe you were mine too.

But if this was always going to be the ending,

then at least let it be one where we walk away toward something better than what we had.

I know you could do better for someone else.

And this time, I know I can do better for myself.

No one talks about the crossfire—about how when two people separate, everyone standing close enough ends up wounded in ways everyone refuses to name.

And for my final

act of love, I’ll let you go.

Best of luck, dancer.