remember me after i'm no longer in your life

it’s both strange and funny how easily people slip away. one day, we’re tangled in each other’s lives, sharing secrets, laughter, and the kind of silences that only feel comfortable with someone who knows you well. and then, suddenly, we’re not.

i wonder how it happens. is it a gradual drifting, like two boats pulled apart by a current too subtle to notice? or is it sharper, a clean break, the kind you only recognize in hindsight? maybe it doesn’t matter. either way, the result is the same: a growing distance where closeness used to be.

what does matter is what’s left behind. the remnants of who we were to each other. i like to think those fragments don’t disappear, that they linger in quiet, unexpected ways. in the way you order your coffee or the kind of books you read. in a song you hear, a joke you tell, or the way you laugh.

i wonder what you’ll remember about me. if you’ll think of me at all. will it be the big things, like the fights and the apologies? or will it be the small things, the ones we didn’t realize were significant until they became memories?

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maybe it’ll be something silly, like the way i always forgot my umbrella when it rained. or something fleeting, like the time we sat in silence, and it wasn’t awkward. or maybe you won’t remember me at all—not in any real, tangible way. maybe i’ll just be a faint impression, a shadow of someone you used to know.

that’s the part that stings the most. the idea that i might fade, that one day you’ll struggle to remember the sound of my voice or the way i made you feel. that everything we were to each other will dissolve into something vague, something inconsequential.

i want to be remembered, not because i think i was extraordinary, but because i was real. because for a time, we shared something that mattered, even if it didn’t last. i don’t need to be a chapter in your life; i’ll settle for a footnote. a name you come across in your mind’s dusty archive and pause over for just a moment.

and if you do remember me, i hope it’s with a kind of softness. not as someone who hurt you, or someone you regret, but as someone who was there, who tried. someone who mattered, even if only for a little while.

i know i won’t always be in your life. that’s the way things go. people leave, or they’re left behind. but i hope that when you think of me, if you think of me, you’ll remember the good parts. the parts where we laughed, where we understood each other, where we were just us.

because that’s how i’ll remember you.