One by One

      He has been haunting me lately. --The Long Lost.

      I can't seem to close my eyes without seeing his. My whole mind seems to fill with the memory of his dark hair, the tiny ones on the back of his neck. I remember his closely cut fingernails. The soft skin in the arch of his foot. White, cotton t-shirts. The bones in his ribcage or the tip of every vertebrae in his spine. When I think about it, I can almost feel precisely where each part of his body fits against mine when we're dancing. It almost feels real still.

      These are it. The scraps of him I keep. Sometimes I wonder what he keeps of me. --Maybe the way I rolled my eyes. How small my hand seemed set against his, or the way they both felt clasped around his neck. Does he remember the way I smiled when I wanted something from him? The way my nails used to drum against the desk or table or doorframe? I wonder if he remembers me in sounds -- my laughter, my sobs, my silence. I wonder if my silence had a sound for him the way his did for me.

      He has been haunting me lately, but I've been letting him. He comes and goes as he pleases in my dreams at night. This is the privilege of forgiveness, I suppose. At least it doesn't hurt anymore. Not the way it used to.

      No. It doesn't hurt.