And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade…
– William Shakespeare
Four thousand lonely days, punctuated by nights of vacuous restlessness. I see your eyes crinkling, lips parted, as laughter escapes them. I don’t remember the sounds, nor the smells. And the warmth… I can no longer feel that, either. All a fragmented jumble of moments, their context clear, but the detail is missing. Remember when we’d quit our imaginary album of tenderness? Now, look at me leaf through one empty page after another. Loneliness like fine dust on weathered books, layering up. A life soaked through and through with your palpable absence. I’ve given up trying to make sense of it all a long time ago. Only hope still lingers. So like a pebble in one’s shoe, like an insect that annoys with its buzzing late into the night. Like that one time, you said you’d felt deep regret for letting go of us. Well, I never did a good job at convincing you that I could not exist without recognizing my reflection in your heart. I could look at those large, soft tears melting at the corners of your pale blue eyes for hours. So in love with your passionate outbursts, your especial pains and earnest desires. Hey, did you know that tomorrow, we turn yet another page as strangers? I’m sorry, I know I am expecting too much from a fantasy. I hope you’ve found what you’re looking for. And I will continue to search for you in chance patches of sunlight in Spring.
Inspired by the series After Life.
tsvetoslav shalev 
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