Until He Returns

He left three years ago.

I didn't even know at first. Car gone, keys gone, money from the safe-box pinched dry of every cent. It was clear he was running—from what I'll never know—but I always hoped it wasn't from me.

And I loved him, I suppose.

Noticing feelings other than my own was something I couldn't discern easily, because I spend way too much time wrapped in my own dreams to notice that the world around me. Selfishness. Happiness. Sometimes those are the same things.

But now that he's gone, I notice everything.

I remember everything.

I remember the last time I saw him, and I remember the first time I met him. But that's not what I found the most interesting. Our second meeting always filled my thoughts in the darkest of time, and I kept playing it back like a broken record to see if I could recognize the tune.

"Hello, again," he had said.

I smiled. "Hello, again."

But that's what I noticed. There's something so binding about the second hello, something I never noticed until the first time he did so. The first greeting always seemed equally important, like the hand of a clock striking twelve, announcing that you've met someone new, but the second greeting is far more meaningful.

"Hello, again."

"Hello, again."

It means that I came back to him. That the first time we met was enough to have me searching for him once more, waiting until I could hear his voice again, and waiting until I could take his hand, give it a firm shake, and feel the way his skin pressed against mine.

But it's the second hello that makes it so much harder to say goodbye.

Luckily, in my case, we never said goodbye. He just left into the dark of the night, taking the one thing I cared about—himself. So, maybe it was love. Just not for him. If he never said goodbye, maybe it means he'll come back for another hello.

I can picture it:

"You're back," I'd say.

He'd smile. "I'm back."

But he's not back at the moment. He will be, I can feel it, whenever he decides to stop running from what kept him away years before. So maybe that's why I kept a piece of him with me all these years, carrying around the necklace he bought for me that day on the beach. I wondered if he knew he was running away then.

I wondered when he first wanted to.

Maybe it was when we got into that fight. It's been so long, I forgot what it was about, but I remember him storming out of the house like the air inside was too hard to breathe. I remember the tears on my face, staining my skin like paint—I just couldn't recall if I was crying for myself or him.

He didn't say goodbye then, but he still showed up on the front door an hour later.

"I'm sorry," he said.

I let him in. "It's okay."

And it really was, then. I wasn't sure why we fell apart, but I'm willing to help put the pieces back together if he'd let me. We'd still look broken, but we'd still be fine.

Sometimes I wondered if by keeping the necklace he gave me, I was keeping him. In a way, maybe he won't really leave unless I forgot the thought of him entirely. A memory might mean more than a moment in this case.

But I'll keep wondering, because he's not here to tell me the answers to all my questions. I want to know them. More than anything. So I'll be here, waiting.

Until he returns.