I sit jittering as i watch the flashing of pavement lines, feeling the coolness of the steel siding of the bus. I watch the rain pelt the puddles, staining it with anxiety but leaving it no wetter than before. My breath infects the clearest inch of the window as i stare at the falling rain racing down the glass, combining and breaking apart. It’s there on that road that i see you. You’re jogging but it’s not raining. You’re running but not with me. And then the bus lurches to a stop and i nonchalantly slide closer to the window but you’re gone because you were never there.

I walk now past the driveway where i last held you. I know I shouldn’t recreate you, but there you are and now i see me. I’m young and tan and the tears in my eyes are out of love and not despair. Words echo in my head. “Never leave me, I never want to lose you.” And they are answered with that awkward hesitant laugh of yours and now i see that smile. The one you gave me instead of your heart. The one that mocks my memory. And then the wind blows the fallen leaves reminding me of how cold the air is and you and I disappear as the frost bites my cheeks.

I stare at the white uncovered wall above my door in my room. No one else can see it but your name bleeds through the dry-wall where we wrote “always and forever” in blue marker before it was boarded up. And days from now it will still be there. Years from today, it will never leave. But the only person that ink drips upon is me. It stains my eyes into a numb surrender and i begin to see the rest of my room. The spot where i fell to my knees in pain. The invisible puddle of tears i left and my eyes remember the burning of the broken vessels. You said you never loved me. My walls are screaming “he did”. You said you never cared but my phone is screaming “He did”. You said you feel nothing for me but the waves outside my window are screaming “he did”. you say you’re not coming back and the pavement cries for you. The pavement you ran down, the pavement we walked everynight.

Noy my head is just filled with all the piercing screams of our memories and they surround me. I wish i could stare and not see. I wish i could listen and not hear. I wish i could walk and not feel. But you follow me everywhere and i fall before your feet with skinned knees and a broken heart but instead of tripping you turn around and disappear again because you can escape and I’m stuck watching the leaves die without you.