Love letter # 582

Time heals, so they say, yet it does not erase. For it is hard to delete an absence. Much has changed since we parted ways but the valley you carved has remained. It traces the frontier in my life. Before/after.

In truth, I never got over it. Yes, I moved on, I functioned, and I took other lovers – and today I am in a good place, and I would not go back. But, like catching sideways glances, I see myself in occasional mirrors and notice first the empty room. It is not that I feel lonely in here, merely distant. There is a difference; and it is exquisite. Like a song sung low, half heard in the mix of more proximate melodies.

Or perhaps it takes the form of silence. The chair unused. Coffee cup nestled deep in the cupboard. Not a big thing, but not nothing. Subtle. Seismic.

Sometimes, when I breathe, I still make the shape of your name.

There is no sadness in this, no desire to reclaim. Instead, recognition. Gratitude. Once, I walked in the light of you. Now, beyond the horizon, across a sea of years, I detect in the movement of shadows that you still shine. And in the triangulating brightness I always know where I stand, and to where I am bound.