The leaves were just beginning to brown in the small park that I used to walk in. That was a year ago, when I was still dating him. Now all that was past.

I touched his fevered brow, watching his chest rise and fall with each shallow breath. It seemed at even as he slept, he suffered with each lungful. His fingers were cold as I reach to hold. The arms that used to encircle me protectively were limp and bony lying parallel to his shrinking body. The lips that kissed else’s lips were dry and cracked.

I cursed myself for remembering the times he cheated on me. All that was past, a year and a month ago. My eyes burned as I helplessly watched him slowly eaten by the disease called cancer. He stirred slightly, the pale white covers matching the pallor complexion of his.

He opened his small eyes and gazed at the ceiling. I shifted his fringe from his eyes as I spoke, “do you remember the roses in the park? They’re bloomed. I want to show them to you. Jasmine told me to-“ His hand tightened around mine. His eyes suddenly bright and clear as though he was well again.

“I’m sorry- Sam.” He turned to look at me. His brown eyes looking so sorrowfully. “I can’t hold on much longer.” His chest hectically rising and falling. He smiled slightly- the same smile he used to give me. Faltering faintly, he licked his dry lips before saying, “you know I never stopped loving you- raindrop.”

I stiffened at him saying the old pet name he gave me previously. “Forgive me raindrop-“ he murmured. His life rapidly ebbing from him. My heart screamed with impatience as I hesitated. I never stopped loving him no matter how many times he broke my heart and I was ashamed by it. He had moved on without me and I was still suffering with all the love I had for him even if he had pretended that I had not existed.

“I loved you too-“ I said, knowing deep in my heart it was too late. “I’ve always loved you.” I brushed my tears away. And for all the love I had for him, I could not tell him that he was forgiven. Leaving him to pass away with the ?regret he had expressed. A year and a month- a past that I could never let go. It was silly how we loved each other yet never confessed.

“It was all his fault, all his fault,” I cried bitterly to myself. Outside the browning leaves fell like a signal to the end of a past I could not let go.