This is a sad and impactful story, @bex-dk. I think the transition is very well done. He tells her gently with the words "You'd always know who I'd been" that he can't become someone new if he is with her. She is embedded in his past.

I agree with you completely about the challenge of expressing ideas with both subtlety and clarity in micro-fiction. It's a tough balancing act! But your editing process paid off. This is well done.

Thank you for all the discussion you included. The writing process is amazing, and we can all learn from one another. As writers, we can only do our best to build worlds and explore the human condition through stories. We cannot control how readers interpret our writing. That fascinates me. We write, then release our stories into the wild and what happens then is up to the readers.

I also struggled with that very thing this week, as you'll see if you read my take on the prompt, "Holiday clean-up."