changes, pt. 3

Alex.

I keep thinking of this promise I made to Eris once, full of words like "always," and how I knew even as I was speaking it that it wasn't a promise I'd be able to keep. I keep thinking of how she smiled and kissed my hand and gave me a look that said she knew it was meaningless, too.

I convinced myself the thing I needed to fight was change: that the reason we both knew it was bullshit is we knew that we'd both change, that the world would change around us. Life is a storm, I thought, and I'd just have to be a rock strong enough to weather it for both of us. (It went without saying that the chaos of life would blow her about like a leaf in the wind.)

Even once the inevitable finally happened, after we'd both betrayed each other, after we made a half-hearted stab at reconciliation, I believed that change was to blame for everything. That maybe things could have been different. But I keep thinking of the morning I made that promise. How I'd known in that moment that she would always be alone with me. How I'd resolved to be steady and unchanging, when the one thing that might have saved us would have been a willingness to change with the leaves.