months after our breakup, my ex emailed an image of us standing outside a beautiful house with two children. the faces looked like plausible combinations of ours, and the scene was so detailed that i stared at it for several minutes
she said she'd been curious about what our future might have looked like. i understood the temptation, but i wasn't ready to become a character in a hypothetical family photo
i asked why she'd sent it. she said she missed the version of our lives we'd planned. i said i missed parts of that future too, but making it visible didn't make it something we could return to
we talked for the first time in months without trying to fix anything. i saved the message for a day, then deleted the attachment. i wanted to remember the relationship we actually lived