#his tender moments & endless summer left me empty im suffering. like. YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK! YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK TO HOW THINGS USED TO B

[mandalhoerian]

childhood friends who became family, who blurred the lines of sibling-tight bonds and something softer, sharper, and more yearning — it's a trope that feels like sitting in the quiet hum of a summer evening when the sun lingers too long on the horizon. because the truth of it is: nothing lingers forever. and you both know that, but you’ll still talk about the old days like maybe you can bring them back. like maybe if you name the memories, you can summon them. like if you say, “remember when we built that fort in the back garden and swore to live there forever because i had a fight with gran,” it’ll mean something now that the garden has been bulldozed and forever has been whittled down to awkward meetings where you can't talk about the elephant in the room.

it’s the uneven ground of being the one who died and the one who was left behind, or the one who grew and the one who wanted to keep the other captured the way they used to be in a snowglobe — or maybe just the realization that you’re both standing on shifting sand now. you talk about the past like it’s a shared secret, but neither of you knows how to talk about the present. maybe you’ve started running out of things to say because the summer nights you used to fill with fun and games are quieter now, and you don’t know how to breach the distance between you that yawns exponentially bigger every single day.

because that’s the ache of it, isn’t it? thinking you’ve grown together, but ending up having grown apart in the blink of an eye. the ache of seeing his face and realizing you don’t know him the way you used to — not like when you could read the curl of his lips or the way he bit the inside of his cheek and know exactly what he was thinking. you still know the shape of caleb, the blueprint of who he was, but he's a house rebuilt in the same place, and you’re standing on the porch like a stranger.

and you miss the summers, the cicadas, sleeping on the floor together with the attic window wide open, sharing ice cream together and being carried because of a scraped knee. even being scolded you refused mosquito spray because you hated the smell. you miss the easy, endless days of being inseparable and being spoiled rotten because time didn’t mean anything then. now, every second feels like a countdown. you sit across from him at a diner, laughter ringing too alien because it doesn’t reach his eyes the way it used to, and you’re counting the minutes until he leaves for skyhaven. or maybe it’s until you leave, because isn’t that the worst realization? there's always a deadline. you tell yourself it’s enough that you were everything to each other once, and there's still something between you like the transition between summer to autumn. but there’s a kind of grief in knowing you’ll never be those kids again, barefoot in the grass, shouting at the stars.

grief. you thought you knew it well.

because you know how to grieve a death — you’ve rehearsed it in your head, folded it into something manageable. it’s a well-worn myth, a story you tell yourself when the silence gets too loud: he’s gone. he’s not coming back. you cried once, twice, a hundred times in the soft, gold-light glow of dusk, in the places you once knew together, and you thought that was the worst part.

but then caleb came back. and now you don’t know what to do with yourself.

because it’s him, isn’t it? same voice, same face, same hands that once shoved you playfully into the lake on a summer afternoon. he looks at you with eyes that are so painfully familiar you want to throw up, but something in them is off — like a song played just a fraction of a second too slow. like the ghost of a childhood home, walls the same but empty, the warmth gone.

you want to say, you’re different. you want to say, what happened to you? but all he says, over and over, with that too-smooth, too-homey certainty is, i’ve always been like this.

and that’s the part that burns. because no, he hasn’t. you would know, wouldn’t you? you spent summers mapping out the topography of his voice, the way it cracked when he laughed too hard, the way he whispered conspiratorial plans under the sheets when you were supposed to be sleeping. you knew his every restless fidget, every dream he had about taking you away to somewhete but never actually going through with it. you would know if this was always him. wouldn’t you?

but what if you’re the one who’s wrong?

the memories are there, but they feel like borrowed pages from someone else’s story now. he tells you, remember when we built a treehouse in the oak by the creek? and you nod, it's like he's trying to coax the sparks out. remember how you used to hum under your breath when you were nervous? and he smiles, but it’s an aching, tight thing.

so you sit there, across from him, trying to measure the distance between the boy you knew and the man wearing his face. he talks about the past like maybe he can drag you back to it. like maybe he can make you remember. but you're here, waiting for him to join you in the present.

but the worst part isn’t the change.

the worst part is the knowing that he’s still here. still breathing, still existing, still talking to you. and yet he’s light-years away with the you of the past.

[comatosebunny09]

GIMME I NEED THIS INJECTED INTO MY VEINS RIGHT MEOW

childhood friends who became family, who blurred the lines of sibling-tight bonds and something softer, sharper, and more yearning — it's a trope that feels like sitting in the quiet hum of a summer evening when the sun lingers too long on the horizon. because the truth of it is: nothing lingers forever. and you both know that, but you’ll still talk about the old days like maybe you can bring them back. like maybe if you name the memories, you can summon them. like if you say, “remember when we built that fort in the back garden and swore to live there forever because i had a fight with gran,” it’ll mean something now that the garden has been bulldozed and forever has been whittled down to awkward meetings where you can't talk about the elephant in the room.

it’s the uneven ground of being the one who stayed and the one who died, or the one who grew and the one who wanted to keep the other captured the way they used to be in a snowglobe — or maybe just the realization that you’re both standing on shifting sand now. you talk about the past like it’s a shared secret, but neither of you knows how to talk about the present. maybe you’ve started running out of things to say because the summer nights you used to fill with fun and games are quieter now, and you don’t know how to breach the distance between you that yawns exponentially bigger every single day.

because that’s the ache of it, isn’t it? thinking you’ve grown together, but ending up having grown apart in the blink of an eye. the ache of seeing his face and realizing you don’t know him the way you used to — not like when you could read the curl of his lips or the way he bit the inside of his cheek and know exactly what he was thinking. you still know the shape of caleb, the blueprint of who he was, but he's a house rebuilt in the same place, and you’re standing on the porch like a stranger.

and you miss the summers, the cicadas, sleeping on the floor together with the attic window wide open, sharing ice cream together and being carried because of a scraped knee. even being scolded you refused mosquito spray because you hated the smell. you miss the easy, endless days of being inseparable and being spoiled rotten because time didn’t mean anything then. now, every second feels like a countdown. you sit across from him at a diner, laughter ringing too alien because it doesn’t reach his eyes the way it used to, and you’re counting the minutes until he leaves for skyhaven. or maybe it’s until you leave, because isn’t that the worst realization? there's always a deadline. you tell yourself it’s enough that you were everything to each other once, and there's still something between you like the transition between summer to autumn. but there’s a kind of grief in knowing you’ll never be those kids again, barefoot in the grass, shouting at the stars.

grief. you thought you knew it well.

because you know how to grieve a death — you’ve rehearsed it in your head, folded it into something manageable. it’s a well-worn myth, a story you tell yourself when the silence gets too loud: he’s gone. he’s not coming back. you cried once, twice, a hundred times in the soft, gold-light glow of dusk, in the places you once knew together, and you thought that was the worst part.

but then caleb came back. and now you don’t know what to do with yourself.

because it’s him, isn’t it? same voice, same face, same hands that once shoved you playfully into the lake on a summer afternoon. he looks at you with eyes that are so painfully familiar you want to throw up, but something in them is off — like a song played just a fraction of a second too slow. like the ghost of a childhood home, walls the same but empty, the warmth gone.

you want to say, you’re different. you want to say, what happened to you? but all he says, over and over, with that too-smooth, too-homey certainty is, i’ve always been like this.

and that’s the part that burns. because no, he hasn’t. you would know, wouldn’t you? you spent summers mapping out the topography of his voice, the way it cracked when he laughed too hard, the way he whispered conspiratorial plans under the sheets when you were supposed to be sleeping. you knew his every restless fidget, every dream he had about taking you away to somewhete but never actually going through with it. you would know if this was always him. wouldn’t you?

but what if you’re the one who’s wrong?

the memories are there, but they feel like borrowed pages from someone else’s story now. he tells you, remember when we built a treehouse in the oak by the creek? and you nod, it's like he's trying to coax the sparks out. remember how you used to hum under your breath when you were nervous? and he smiles, but it’s an aching, tight thing.

so you sit there, across from him, trying to measure the distance between the boy you knew and the man wearing his face. he talks about the past like maybe he can drag you back to it. like maybe he can make you remember. but you're here, waiting for him to join you in the present.

but the worst part isn’t the change.

the worst part is the knowing that he’s still here. still breathing, still existing, still talking to you. and yet he’s light-years away with the you of the past.