Almost Strangers

A goodbye with no villains.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about healthy breakups. Not the ones caused by cheating or betrayal. The kind where two people still love each other, yet somehow arrive at the same painful decision to let each other go.

Instead of writing it like a typical short story, I imagined their last conversation as if you accidentally stumbled upon an old chat.

Happy reading :)

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^{August 5, 2022
20:34 PM}

Jeo:

Do you think we'll ever become strangers?

Niamh:

No.

Just people who know too much about each other.

Jeo:

Damn.

That’s somehow worse.

Niamh:

Maybe.

But at least ‘we’ happened.

Jeo:

You make everything sound less painful.

Niamh:

I’m trying here.

Are you angry?

Jeo:

I wanted to be.

Turns out I’m just sad.

Niamh:

Me too.

Jeo:

I keep thinking there should’ve been one big reason.

Something we could point at and blame.

Niamh:

I know.

We weren’t ruined overnight.

We faded so slowly neither of us noticed.

Jeo:

You always have an answer for everything.

Niamh:

Well...

not everything.

I'm still trying to unlearn seven years of you.

^{21:15 PM}

Niamh:

J, are you still there?

Jeo:

Yeah. I’m still here.

Niamh:

I hope you know that I would've chosen you every time.

Jeo:

I know.

I would’ve kept choosing you too.

^{Niamh reacted to your message.}

Jeo:

Guess I can’t call you “my life” anymore.

That’s gonna take some getting used to.

Niamh:

…

Yeah.

Jeo:

Fine.

I’ll start calling you “dude” :P

^{Niamh reacted to your message.}

Jeo:

Oh, you already deleted our pictures from your Instagram.

Niamh:

I just archived them.

I don’t have the heart to delete them yet.

They’re still good memories, ‘ya know.

Jeo:

That’s good to hear.

Niamh:

I figured I had to start somewhere.

Jeo:

So we’re really doing this, huh?

Niamh:

We don't have to be good at it tonight.

We’ll take our time.

Jeo:

Promise me you’ll be happy.

Niamh:

I’ll try.

Wanna make a bet?

First one to move on wins.

Jeo:

You know me.

I never liked losing.

Loser buys coffee.

---

^{August 5, 2025
20:34 PM}

Jeo:

Nini, wanna grab coffee?

^{This account is unavailable.}

---

Our last conversation, the one that finally gave us closure, was the day fate stopped taking our side.

We still live in the same town. Almost three years have passed, and somehow we've never crossed paths again. Not at our go-to café. Not at the local grocery store. Not while waiting at a red light. Not even by accident.

It’s strange how someone who once knew every version of you can slowly become someone who no longer knows the person you’ve become.

Maybe that’s what moving on really looks like.

Not forgetting.

Just never finding each other again.

---

An epilogue in verse:

where you aren’t

the map of us has narrowed down,
to the grid of this suffocating town.
i’ve memorized the radius of your ghost,
the very spots that haunt me most.

i calculate the angles of a chance encounter,
mapping out the streets I cannot enter,
changing my route, checking the light,
avoiding the neon of your favorite night.

i need to unlearn the way you speak,
the way your name leaves me feeling weak.
i’m dismantling the architecture of your face,
scrubbing your fingerprints from every space.

i walk with my eyes fixed on the concrete seam,
trying to wake from the remnants of a dream.
it isn’t you I’m mourning, not the way we fell,
but the version of me I knew so well
before you became the lens, the sky, the air,
before I saw you everywhere.

another saturday, another screen,
clearing the record of where we’ve been.
i’m tucked away, a ghost in the dark,
while you’re idling in our old favorite park.
i’m catching my breath in a lonely lot,
while you’re ordering the coffee we once bought.

the irony of this small, crowded cage,
where I’m forced to turn, but can’t close, the page.
i know you too well, it’s a heavy debt,
a language of you I haven’t forgotten yet.

so I’ll keep my gaze on the ground below,
forgetting the places I’m not meant to go,
hunting for the man I used to be
before this town became a map of you,
and left no room for me.

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