"Our small forever" by PQHAÜS

Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS

I smirked when I overheard a middle school couple whispering about forever. They repeated the word as if every repetition made the love they held for each other a little stronger, as if the universe might overhear their promise and decide to preserve their small world a little longer.

I don’t think I smirked because I believed they were lying, nor because I possessed some tragic wisdom that their forever was destined to break. Maybe they will go to prom together. Maybe they will get married one day, and their middle school love story will become a story they tell over dinner with laughter in their voices. I smirked because I remembered a time when forever felt like a promise rather than a wish, before I learned that forever is often an illusion born from our desperate desire to hold onto moments that were never designed to remain still.

Growing up, I had many forevers I promised and many forevers that were promised to me. Some quietly disappeared because I grew into someone else. The toys I once could not sleep without now sit in forgotten boxes, holding memories of a child who no longer exists. Some forevers did not break; they simply became memories. They became old rooms that no longer fit me, songs I no longer listen to, and people who live more beautifully in my memories than they do in my present.

But some forevers left before I had the chance to outgrow them. Some people simply could not stay long enough to watch me become someone else. As my body grew taller, my childhood slowly became a place I could visit but never return to. I was growing toward the future while quietly waving goodbye to a world that once felt like it would wait for me forever.

The older I became, I realized life is nothing more than a collection of small forevers. A summer afternoon that unknowingly became the last summer of our innocence. A friend we thought would sit beside us in every chapter of our lives. A home whose smell we believed our bodies would remember forever. The cruelest part is that life rarely tells us when a chapter is ending. There is no music swelling in the background. No final scene where everyone gathers to say goodbye. We simply live through ordinary moments, unaware that they will one day become the scenes we replay the most.

Maybe that is why we keep using the word forever. Not because we are foolish enough to believe that nothing changes, but because some moments are simply too beautiful to accept an ending. We say forever because there are certain people, places, and versions of ourselves that our hearts refuse to place in the past, even when time quietly asks us to.

So when I hear middle school lovers promise each other forever, I no longer find it naive. I find it deeply human. There is something beautiful about standing in front of something temporary and loving it with such sincerity that, for a brief moment, we believe our feelings might be enough to make the universe remember it.

Perhaps forever was never about how long something stayed.

Perhaps forever was simply a moment that was loved so deeply that it continued to exist long after it was gone.