Inspired by "Poem of regret for an old friend" by Meghan O'Rourke and "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

Once upon a time, we were together, always. Joined at the hip, we would swagger and dance through the pains of growing up, loudly, proudly. Once upon a time, your room was a safe port in the hurricane of my life, not a secret garden, locked and abandoned. Where did we get lost? When did we get lost?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, I took the one more travelled, and that has made all the difference.

I think your parents only let me in because it felt so familiar. Homemade lemonade and rainbow chocolate chip cookies shouted greetings as I went tearing up the stairs to your room with a tattered backpack and a plan for our next adventure. Why was I always the one making the plans?

It's so strange to see your mother dressed in black.

She cried into my shoulder. My jacket is still damp from her tears. Your parents said they missed me, and I lied and told them I missed them too. The truth is (and I've always told you the truth, even when it scalded) that I haven't spared them a thought in almost five years.

I refuse to believe that this was your apartment; it's so lifeless. The only flash of colour is the tiger lillies in the floral arrangements. Those beloved books are buried in cardboard coffins of dusty moving boxes, forgotten and unloved for years (just like you). There's no sunshine, no plants, no personality. It's so empty that it has the uncanny feeling of a stock photo, unreality meant to represent reality. Did you even live here?

When I got the call, Kay didn't even know who you were. I know you two met once, back when we first started dating. You were invited to the wedding, but we forgot to invite you to the baby shower. We made a pinkie promise as kids that if we had children of our own someday in that far away land of adulthood, we would be godparents to each other's families.

There are so many other promises I've broken, ruthlessly, relentlessly. The shattering of broken words was music to my ears, a resounding cracking sound like a frozen lake thawing. Why are these jagged edges making me cry?

Sitting on your bed, sobbing, God, this takes me back to high school, except I wasn't alone then. Back then, there would have been an arm around my shoulder, tea with too much honey in my hand, and inexplicable wisdom tucked snugly into the shyness and bravado of teenagerhood.

When I grumbled about vying for your attention while you were lost in the clouds of a daydream, you told me once, "The secret music of one's head can't be shared. A dream is the only way to breathe." It was probably a quote from something I couldn't be bothered to look up, one of those many inside jokes you had with yourself.

I can almost believe this was your bedroom. There's the crochet blanket you started in junior high and finished in senior year. It's the colour of the pink lemonade you were always drinking. The snow globe with Chippy, the snowman whose arm fell off when I accidentally knocked over your desk back in elementary school, is hidden on the window ledge. Did I give that to you? I can't remember.

Why didn't you reach out? I know you remembered me; there's a picture of us at high school graduation on the windowsill, half trapped under vinyl blinds next to Chippy.

I missed you, I think. When a stray memory flitted through my mind like a butterfly, I would get a lightning flash of nostalgia. I never had time for reminiscing. What point is there in looking back? It only leads to regret.

You and I were so different. It didn't matter when we were kids; I made the games, stood up to the big kids who picked on you for your accent and picked on me for hanging out with you. I did the talking for us in class. I got better grades. I was the first to get my licence. But you, you were always wandering the secret gardens of your daydreams, dancing to the music I could never hear. I've never met someone who romanticized life quite the way you did.

In retrospect, maybe that was your way of surviving life. Who knocked those rose-tinted lenses off your face? Was it me?

I knew you were struggling back then. Why did I cut the last threads of friendship so clinically, so brutally? Ice Queen, they called me, cool, calculating. Original, I know, but it was true. You were slowing me down, so I froze you off.

Were you the price for my success, my satisfaction? I sacrificed you to the fire of my ambition, the fire that raged behind my icy exterior. Set alight that beautiful garden of our friendship, colourful and messy. By the time I thawed out once more, that bridge, the overgrown door to our secret garden, was burned so thoroughly I almost forgot it ever existed.

It wasn't worth it.

A few of your random seeds of wisdom stuck with me, "It's terrible to live without love" was one of the last things you said to me. A rather obvious statement, but you said it with such sadness that I think you knew what was coming.

Maybe it's because of the tears blurring my vision, but I can't find your copy of The Secret Garden anywhere. You had all of her work, Frances Hodgson Burnett's, but that was your favourite. I never forgot that.

You'll never get to read it to the baby boy who should have been your godson.

In my mind, you were a static memory of childhood. Romping around in butter-coloured summer sunlight, roasting marshmallows in my fireplace on Christmas morning while we showed off our new presents, sleepovers, hugs, and hair braiding; all existed in the past along with you. I forgot you were a real person, still alive, only a phone call away.

My life is conventional, but I find it fulfilling; loving marriage, busy job, new baby. I'm a selfish person; I'll hoard satisfaction like a dragon from one of your fairytales, hunt my ambitions down and mount my successes like trophies on the wall. Vanity, I suppose, but in this moment, there is very little I wouldn't give up to have you walk through that door humming some nonsense song you made up and slopping tea all over your sweater because you never managed to hold a mug without tipping it.

Regret is a dreadful feeling; I hate it. Those sun-soaked memories, the warm satisfaction of pride and success, forever darkened by the overcast skies of grief and regret.

Why are there tiger lilies, even in your bedroom? Didn't they know your favourite flowers were gerberas?

I found your copy of The Secret Garden. It was under your pillow (of course it was, you were a romantic right till the end, weren't you?). The poor book is tattered, tea-stained, annotated to the point of being nearly illegible and held together by lovingly placed duct tape. It's very you.

It's all that's left of you.

Your mother is calling me (only me now, it used to be us) the service will be starting soon. I'll ask her if I can keep the book, you don't mind, do you? When baby Benny is older, I'll read it to him and tell him about a wise friend, made of rosy sunlight and flower petals pressed between pages of stories bookended with Once upon a time and The End
written in swooping calligraphy.

I'll tell him that it's terrible to live without love, that sometimes a dream is the only way to breathe, to survive.

I'll dream of you.