~

I want to leave.
I want to leave.
I want to leave this city
that keeps his shape in all its corners,
that holds his name in all its cracks,
that will not let me
just
forget.

I check the door before I sleep.
I check the door before I sleep.
Not for safety, no.
For the stupid, tender, embarrassing hope
that someone might be standing there.
That he came back.
That he found his way.

He didn't.
He won't.

I check anyway.

At the elevator, I wait.
At the street, I search.
At the office gate, my eyes do that thing,
that same thing,
that shameful thing,
where they scan a crowd
for a face
that is not coming.

And still.
And still.
And still.

I went somewhere new last tuesday.
Clean streets. Unfamiliar corners.
And within ten minutes
I had built the whole story,
him finding this place, him becoming a regular,
him at that table, that chair, that cup.

I sat where he would have sat.

I do this.
I do this.
I know I do this and I do it anyway.

Someone said his city's name at work today.
And I was gone for an hour.
Building a friendship between two people
who have never met,
who will never meet,
who only exist
because I needed somewhere
to put him.

Same city.
Same work.
Same hands, maybe.

I do this.
I do this.
I know I do this and I do it anyway.

The date lives in my passwords.
The date lives in my passwords
and I won't change it.
Proof. A scar. A door I keep
returning to
with a key that no longer fits
and my hand still
reaching.

Every transaction.
Every login.
Every time the laptop asks me to *please enter credentials* —

my fingers already know.
my fingers always know.

On the metro I close my eyes.
I breathe in the city,
exhaust, rain, someone's lunch,
and underneath all of it,
his hand.

Not a memory.
The actual weight of it.
The specific warmth.
That particular gravity
that I cannot
unfeel.

And that is why.
That is why.
That is why I need to run,

not from him,
never from him,
but from the city
that learned his shape
before I could unlearn it,

from the door I check every night,
from the elevator I watch every morning,
from the passwords I will not change,
from the corner table I keep sitting at,

from the version of me
that still lives here,
waiting,
circling,
returning,

at every door
that will not
open.

~