Forgotten Fireworks, Forgotten You

Seven years into my relationship with Tina, I realized I was trapped in a slow, silent punishment.

Every time she chose her childhood friend, Lucas, over me, a piece of the evidence that I had loved her was stripped from my mind.

The first time it happened, she left to spend Lucas’s birthday with him, and I woke up unable to recall the first time she and I had ever held hands.

The second time, she put his name on a project proposal I had pulled all-nighters to write. When I woke up the next morning, the memory of the pouring rain on the night she confessed her love to me was gone.