Bits and pieces, like shredded memories, linger like her perfume in my car after she shut the door for the last time. She lingers the way my words linger in her heart, words shared between lovers and writers. She was never romance, never anything Plato would recognize. 

But, she lingered so long, and now my heart aches with the thought of her return. With her absence like a ghost in my heart, now I just search for a new me. Yet, I was always her, or at least I wished I was. She was a friend, the purest form of the word, yet ‘friend’ seems worthless, artless, lifeless; ‘friend’ is everything she could never be and everything I am afraid I am without her. 

Her voice still echoes in the chasms she left in my heart, yet her evergreen shadow suffers in a world without her—a world silent like a starless spotlight. She was the movie, and I was just the screen. Now, I hold onto the idea of her return, the sequel, but waiting bites hard.

And, I don’t bite back. 

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and my heart is full, but my hands are empty. I study their isolation while my brain sedates itself with the thought of holding on, holding on for her. They’re just hands, but they’re lonelier than I am, lonelier than my heart is. 

I know her heart is lonely too, for I know her heart like the back of my hand—even better than my hand. I spent more time holding hers than examining my own. Now, I hold nothing: not resentment, not patience, not numbness. 

I hold nothing. 

Now, time withers like bubbles on our tongue, like chocolate in our palms. Time withers like my voice because our voices were infinite, but my life was never meant to be a solo. I can’t survive alone in the spotlight—not as a singer, not when she’s the only song I ever knew. I could be a singer if I loved my voice the way I loved her—if I loved my voice the way she loved me.  

But, I don’t, and now I just wait, collapsing under my own desperate reminiscence and saturated memories. My love for her is unforgivingly explosive and politely destructive, and it leaves craters in my heart, craters the size of her hand, her hand that fits so perfectly in mine.

Now, I just wait—for her hands, for her heart, for her voice.

I wait for her.