What They Never Tell You

What they never tell you is this:

Someday, it'll be someone you know.

Someone whose handwriting is on a scrap of paper on your desk,

Who you’ve seen in a bathing suit and nothing else

Who laughed when you got flip flop tan lines that day at the beach.

It will be someone whose clothes you’ve worn

Whose hair you’ve brushed

Whose toenails you’ve painted.

Their breath will be as familiar as your own

And you’ll remember when they pierced their bellybutton

And when they got their first kiss.

Maybe you’ll feel the shift, like when someone turns next to you in bed.

But maybe you won't

At all.

What they never tell you is this:

Someday, it'll be someone you love, someone who is almost as much of you as you yourself are

and you'll never be the same