An Ode To My Former Flings

why i'll always hold you in my heart

A fling is knowing, from the very beginning, that the clock is ticking. And instead of letting that reality cast a shadow over it, you let it make everything more vivid. You kiss harder, you laugh louder, you memorize the way someone touches you, the way they say your name, because you know it won’t always be yours to hear. There are no expectations, no slow unraveling, no bitter endings. Only a moment, stretched as far as it can go.

A situationship is filled with hesitation. A fling is filled with intention. A situationship lingers in limbo, afraid to ask for more, unsure of where it stands. cowardice. A fling is bold in its impermanence, fearless in its devotion to now. And so, instead of asking What happens after? a fling only asks What do we do with this?

And then, you live.

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July 29 2024- Luca

It was an unspoken thing, this borrowed time, this little pocket of the universe where we got to exist together before it was over. We filled it with everything we could. Slow afternoons that bled into violet evenings. Walks where we barely spoke, our arms brushing as if we could absorb each other by touch alone. And the nights- God, the nights.

He would kiss me and giggle, his breath catching between laughter and something softer. He didn’t rush. Didn’t fumble to undress me or move things along like there was some destination we had to reach. He just wanted to be close. To press his chest against mine, to feel the warmth of skin on skin, to whisper things that didn’t matter but felt important anyway. He wasn’t the best kisser, but I loved the way he kissed. Like he was tasting something sweet, something he wasn’t sure he deserved but was going to savor anyway.

I would leave, and he would stay. The sky would look the same, but I wouldn’t be there to see it with him. And still, if you asked me, if you said, “Was it worth it, knowing how it would end?” I would tell you,

“Of course.”

Because this was the kind of love that didn’t need a future to matter. It was golden and brief, and because of that, it was perfect.

We hugged for a long time. Longer than two people should when they are trying to say goodbye. His arms were wrapped around me, his chin resting in the curve of my neck, his breath warm against my skin. I could feel his heartbeat against my ribs, steady but aching, like it knew something mine didn’t want to admit. I held onto him the way someone holds onto the last sip of wine on their tongue, the last stretch of sunlight before the sky folds into dusk.

My heart was everywhere, racing in my chest, rising in my throat, pressing against the backs of my teeth. Say it, I thought. Say it before it’s too late.

I love you.

Not I love you, let’s make this work. Not I love you, let’s change everything. Just I love you, and I need you to know.

And when I finally lifted my head, when I found the courage to look at him, I saw it in his eyes. The same thing, sitting there, swelling, silent, unspoken. I knew he felt it too. Of course he did.

We would leave this behind. We would walk away, find new people, press our bodies against others, trace unfamiliar faces in the dark. Maybe we would find great loves, the kind that stay. Maybe we wouldn’t. But this pocket of time, this golden, suspended moment—this was ours. Only ours.

I reached up, wiped a tear from his cheek with my thumb. He let me. He closed his eyes like he wanted to commit the feeling of it to memory, like he wanted to take something of me with him when he walked out that door.

And then, he did.

The door clicked shut behind him, quiet but final.

I lay naked in the center of the bed, sheets tangled, the ghost of his warmth still trapped between the fabric. My body felt like an open wound, exposed, electric, raw. Flesh, nails, blood, neurons—everything humming with the absence of him.

I listened to his footsteps fading.

And then… silence.

I swallowed hard, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the grief to settle, waiting for my body to remember that it was alone now.

And then suddenly their rhythm broke.

His footsteps stopped.

Before I could even sit up, I heard them again, faster this time, urgent, running. My breath caught. My body knew before my mind did.

The door flung open.

And then, before I could speak, before I could even think, he was kissing me.

A frantic, reckless, devastating last kiss. His hands were in my hair, his lips everywhere. my cheek, my jaw, my mouth. He kissed me like he wanted to ruin me. Like he wanted to carve this moment into my bones. I wanted to tell him something anything but there was no room for words, only breath and skin and the unbearable weight of knowing that this was the last time.

And then just as suddenly he ran.

The door slammed shut.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

December 8 2023- Charlie

It started with a message. A reply to a story, a snowy picture of my house, the one that was about to be sold, the one I had grown up in. It was a quiet night, and I was alone, heartbroken, freshly severed from someone who didn’t even have the decency to stay through Christmas:

the million dollar man

…And then, out of nowhere, Charlie.

I had no idea who he was. I didn’t know his last name, didn’t know the weight that it carried. All I knew was that he saw something in me, and in that moment, that was enough.

The conversation started small, the way they always do. A few words, an exchange, the easy rhythm of two strangers finding a reason to keep talking. But then, somehow, it became more. We talked every night. Called each other before bed. Fell asleep on FaceTime, breathing into the silence, keeping each other company in the dark. It was never about that. It was never about trying to make something happen. It was just about having each other, in the only way we could.

I was alone in a house that no longer felt like mine. Two weeks, quarantined with my own thoughts, my own sadness, my own ache. But every night, there was him. His voice. His words. His presence, even from miles away.

"Writing this as I go downstairs, but I want to grab your face."

"Won’t get over how beautiful you are."

"I never open up, and I mean never. Not even to my family. But I feel safe with you. Like I can tell you anything."

There was something different about him. Something careful. He liked that I respected his privacy, that I wasn’t prying, wasn’t trying to unravel him too quickly. Maybe that’s why he let me in. Why he let me see parts of himself he swore he never showed anyone.

"We have to bridge the distance one day. It would feel wasted if I never got to see you in person."

It was the kind of connection that wasn’t built to last, but it was built to mean something. And I knew, even as I was forming an attachment to him, even as I clung to his words like they were keeping me afloat, that this was all it could be. A voice on the other end of the line. A presence in the spaces between sleep and waking. A conversation that never ran out of things to say.

But God, did I enjoy him. Not because of who he was, not because of anything beyond the simple fact that he was.

"If you ever met someone else, as much as it would hurt, I’d still want you in my life."

"I like you. You must know that by now."

"Merry Christmas Eve, (redacted). So happy I know you."

It wasn’t a fling in the traditional sense. We weren’t tangled in sheets, weren’t pressing our bodies together in some fleeting, golden moment, but this… this was intimacy, too.

In a different way, In the way of words exchanged at 2 a.m., of vulnerability given freely, of knowing that someone, somewhere, was thinking of you.

But he’s still keeping his promise.

It’s been a year now, and life has swallowed us both whole, his is a whirlwind of things I don’t ask too much about, mine, a quiet chaos of its own. And yet, he’s still here, in whatever way he can be. I know we’ll see each other one day. Maybe this month, maybe when I move in August. I know this to be true the way you know winter will come again, even when you can’t feel the coldness yet.

I don’t know what it will be when we do. I don’t know if we’ll slip back into the same easy rhythm, if he’ll still look at me like he did through the screen, if the words will still fall between us the way they once did. I don’t know if the moment has passed, if reality will dull the sharpness of what we were.

But I do know this: I will always be grateful to that beautiful stranger.

Even if deep down, I wish it never would’ve ended. Even if I still think about those two weeks, the worst and best of my life as if they were something sacred.

Maybe we were just two people who found each other at the right time. Maybe we were just lonely. Or maybe, for a moment, we belonged to each other in the only way we could.

And maybe that was enough.

And when we see each other again, whether it’s for a moment or a while, whether we fall back into it or let it slip away quietly, I hope, at the very least, that somewhere, on some quiet winter night… he remembers everything too.

August 21 2022- GianMarco

It should have been impossible, the way we understood each other. How two people who barely spoke the same language could fall into conversation as if we had known each other in another life. But maybe words were never the important part. Maybe meaning was something that lived between the words, in the pauses, in the way we leaned in when we spoke, in the laughter that filled the empty spaces where language failed us.

His English was broken, but it never felt incomplete. He spoke in fragments, in sentences stitched together with effort and charm, and when he struggled, I waited. Gave him the space to find the words. He liked that, I think. That I never rushed him. That I never made him feel small for trying. And God, did he try.

That night, we forgot the world. The bar was loud, full of bodies, full of voices, but I never heard any of it. I only heard him. And when he took my hand, when he pulled me onto the floor to slow dance to a song that wasn’t meant to be danced to, the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.

That hot summer day in Berlin, I was supposed to be editing my documentary, supposed to be locked away in a dark room, piecing together stories that weren’t my own. But instead, I chose him. And I was delighted to.

We wandered through the city, the heat pressing against our backs, the air thick with the scent of pavement and possibility. He was a history fanatic, eyes lighting up as he talked, hands moving wildly, unbothered by the way his English fumbled. He wasn’t shy about it. If anything, he reveled in sharing what he knew, in teaching me the way Berlin had once stood, the way time had bent it and broken it and built it back again.

Each time we stepped onto a train, he pulled me closer, as if afraid I might disappear into the crowd. And then, with the carelessness of someone who needed to, he kissed me; mask on, his, mine.

He couldn’t believe how similar we were. Neither could I.

He left my apartment a few days later. Im sure my neighbors were happy. I kissed him goodbye, he told me he loved me. thinking that was the last of it. That our story would end as fleetingly as it began; a message.

Not just any message. A love letter, in Italian.

I read it slowly, afraid of losing something in translation, afraid that if I read it too quickly, it would slip through my fingers and disappear. The words curled into each other like vines, winding, intimate, full of something I could feel even before I understood.

He told me he had never met someone like me before. That what we shared brief as it was, had shaken him, had moved him. That he never thought he could feel so much in such little time.

And then, in his way, he said something that made my chest ache, he told me his English had gotten better. That speaking to me, listening to me, had changed something in him. That even his professor had noticed. That he was proud. That he was delighted.

And so was I.

It didn’t change me. Not in the way great loves do. But it left an imprint; a soft, lingering warmth, the kind that stays without ever asking to.

I don’t know if I will ever see him again.

But I wish him well.

He was my first ever fling.

And for what it was, it was sweet.

“is it better to speak or to die?”

He chose to speak.

And maybe that’s why I remember him.

Present Day- 2025

Flings sting. They leave pain, and yes, it’s often unfair. There's no escaping that truth; the sweet, fleeting nature of them means they always end too soon, leaving you with a longing that lingers far longer than you expect. But that’s part of their beauty. The impermanence of a fling makes it so alive, so vibrant in the moment. And even though it hurts, it’s the kind of pain that feels like it’s worth it. Because in that moment, you were fully there… no distractions, no hesitations, just the pure bliss of being with someone who, even for a short while, becomes everything to you.

I miss all of them. All the moments, all the little sparks that once felt so big. They meant something. They meant more than I could express then, and I know they’ll mean something forever. The first time I held someone in a way that made my heart race. The first time I kissed someone and felt like everything was right in the world, even if it was just for an instant. Those moments are stitched into me in a way that I’ll never forget.

When I look back, even when I’m 50 and maybe married to someone else, I’ll remember them. I’ll remember the sweetness and the ache, the parts of me I was then, the parts of them that stayed with me. And I’ll shed a tear. Not because of regret, but because those flings, those fleeting, fragile things, they mattered. They shaped me. They taught me how to love, how to feel, how to be open.

And yes, it's beautiful to have lived those moments, to have allowed myself to love someone, even if just for a time. Those flings will always mean something to me. And even in their ending, they will continue to remind me of the raw, vulnerable beauty of life, the beauty of living in the moment with someone.

Situationships don’t do that. Situationships are hesitant. They linger in uncertainty, in unspoken words, in the fear of saying too much or asking for more. They stretch out until they snap, and by the time they end, they leave behind nothing but exhaustion and what-ifs. Situationships are cowardice. Flings are intention.

And so, we romanticize them. We let them live in us, as they were, untarnished by time. Because flings short, delicate, intoxicating remind us of one simple truth.

We were here. We were alive. And for a moment, with them, that was enough.

xoxo,

Daughter Of Discourse