You saw your ex-lover again outside of a 24-hour supermarket eating pudding from a plastic cup. The white fluorescent light outlines his figure and you suddenly remember that this is how you’ve always seen him before—like a ghost that came into your life as quickly as it went. Awkward ‘hellos’ and ‘what are the odds’ eclipse the lingering stares and shifting feet and the twitch of fingers that so badly want to reclaim what was once yours. You wonder if he feels the same. In this empty parking lot under the bright neon and the watchful gaze of the moon, you say nothing of the secrets you’ve cried into your pillow all those years ago and the selfish desire that burns beneath your ribcage to hold that cold calloused hand against your chest where it belongs. But you see his distant eyes cast downward with that familiar despair that broke you that you realize how wrong this all is—that what has withered can never revive, that he was never yours to have, never yours to hold in this one lifetime you had shared together. And somehow this second goodbye tears you apart but you manage a smile and a ‘maybe in the next, our love will stay’ as if saying so will put your pieces back together. One day it will. By then, you’ll remember nothing of the promise you whispered into the midnight breeze that will carry it across the seas of time. For now, you are broken. And time will not bring you relief. Until it does.
