Dear Scott

Epilogue

Dear Scott,

It’s funny

After all this time

I’m starting to lose your face

Starting to lose your voice

At some point

I can’t tell you when 

You began to fade

Into the past

My heart still wants

To go back and fix

The damages it caused

To go back and save us

Before we could fall

On the other hand, dear

My heart’s moving on

Thinking of you less and less

It’s this half of me

This half moving on

That is leaving you behind

How odd it is

To say I’m leaving you

To say I’m moving on

When it’s really all

I have left to do

To leave once you’ve

Already left me

“I can’t believe we’re seniors!” Amy screamed, throwing her arms in the air as we sped out of the parking lot. The warm summer air whipped in through the open car windows, the main street of our small town passing by while we drove along.

“I know, it’s nuts,” I chimed in passively, watching the road. My hair, cut almost a foot shorter over the summer, was pulled back tightly, leaving my forehead and eyes untouched. My appearance hadn’t changed much in three months, my eyes the same pale blue they had always been, my figure still short and stout. 

I couldn’t say I was the same inside anymore though. My mind had changed, my thoughts mature and more rational. Colder than it had ever been, my patched up heart beat differently, hiding a jagged scar from the world. I had grown up in the three months after their June graduation… Over time, I lost that naïve sparkle in my eye, waved goodbye to it as it fled from my soul.

“It’s crazy being the oldest… like all day I kept looking for people who graduated last year… and they were just gone.” 

I inhaled deeply, the truth in her words hitting a nerve in my composed chest. “Yeah, me too,” I whispered. “I kept expecting to see Steven in the stairwell, or Tyler waiting in the band hallway…” or Scott by my locker, I thought to myself. Throughout the day, there were spaces, gaping holes filling the school, where graduated seniors had once belonged. Where I would always expect to see my boys waiting for me. 

“But hey! We’re seniors!” she screamed again. Looking out the window, Amy sat, thinking hard about something as she bit her lip. “I heard some Scott news yesterday.” 

I breathed in through my nose, my jaw clenching as I bit down on my lower lip. I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t wrap my head around it, all I knew was even after time had passed, my heart still skipped a beat whenever I heard his name. My fingers squeezed the steering wheel, my eyes remaining glued to the road.