Some things are better left unsaid

Three years later, 

a new girl sits cross-legged

 on his bed.

She tastes like 

a different flavor of bubblegum 

than he is used to.

She opens up a book 

that he had to read in high school, 

and a folded picture of us falls 

out of chapter four.

Now there are two unfinished stories

 resting in her lap.

Inevitably, 

she asks, 

and he tells her.

He says: I dated her 

a while back.

He doesn't say: Sometimes, 

when I'm holding you, 

I imagine the smell 

of her vanilla perfume.

He says: She was 

younger than me.

He doesn't say: The sixteen summers 

in her bones warmed 

the eighteen winters 

my skin had weathered.

He says: It's nothing now.

He doesn't say: But it was everything then.

— m.f. // Some things are better left unsaid