How Permanent is Forever?

Forever Can Change and Still Be Forever

BY YVE SPENGLER

Inside my mind,

I see his eyes every time I close mine; polaroids falling as we untangle from each other. In the midst of forever, I watch the horizon while fire ants race through my palms, and I scratch them. He lives forever, an unforgettable agency.

The heart cannot let go, he is a living question mark.

I turn for comfort to a friend, I tell her anxiety has made fire in my hair, and she anchors me. Later, when she’s gone; it’s the ghost of you and the raw beating heart of me. Of him buying me milk, telling me to have a good life, and me saying “stop” because it was a goodbye. Our eyes sparkled together, but now he laughs at me. So goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye please, please, please, please God stay

let him stay, please.

Forever is like love, it is promised, and when gifted it is not expected to be taken back. Forever takes on momentary characteristics. There seems to be more of an emotional forever than a literal one. Forever in the human sense is limited when put into the context of relationships; you cannot love someone forever, because it is “until death do us part.” Does that make the “forevers’” we say worth it? Withstanding this fear, perhaps, forever finds ways to live on: through polaroids, letters, or even oneself.

For me, forever takes the form of change. I pull in pieces of people and adapt them into my life. Whenever I straighten my back, I hold my heart up to the sky in order to appear more vulnerable, my posture tall, just like my friend taught me. My contentment is voiced by a little noise at the top of my throat, like him. I give boundlessly, like my mom. Carefully collecting fragments, we are gradually worn down into solid stones, permanently here in others when eroded. This is how we continue on in different forms, just as rocks are permanently here. Even if they erode they refuse to disappear. When we have conceded our time on Earth, we live on through the souls we’ve touched. Each one of us, a composition of unforgettable agencies that have been passed down from previous souls.

Why are we always changing? Like a stone, sinking to the bottom of a stream. The water’s unobservable minerals file smooth rough edges. I found a place next to you and we are together. Heedlessly, the current drifts us apart. We hit each other on the way out, chipping our edges. Did you know we wouldn’t stay together? Did I know?

I felt your pull away from me and I cried. I thought I was overthinking.

You told me to go get your hoodies, first thing. Heart racing, I complied.

A shocked “What?” resounding in my head. You were leaving me?

Our souls once combined, you tore yours from me, but I still keep a part of you. There is desolation from the part you took of me, so I change, because what else can I do?

Even if my head still conjures thoughts of You. Does the sun still shine so bright in your eyes? Will I forever run like a fawn when I see someone who looks like him? I miss you, forever. A couple on the gray sidewalk pass by, she lays her gentle head on his broad shoulder, eyes dancing together under his shared umbrella. Another’s red lips smile across the table to a man with his head attentively on his hand. “Is this moment forever?” I hear myself ask him. When I hear the sizzle of an egg every morning, will I continue to think of the day after you left me? “You are my first and last” in his soothing voice, yet I hear my “forever and always” respond on a TV instead.

When forever ends so many times, it is tremulant. One moment is said to be forever, but although my forever has passed, it is not gone; it has simply changed shape. The way I love him lingers in a new way, the way I give boundaries and time back to myself.

You are allowed to mean forever, and to change it. Maybe forever is not meant to be static, maybe it has the ability to take new forms. Rethink forever to take away the unexpected nature that has so often left you burned. Forever can change and still be forever.