A

You are gone from my life. Once, not long ago, but maybe so, I stayed on the phone with you for six hours. I had fallen in love with you before that, but when something monumental like this happens, surely, then, it's meant to be.

Enchantment. That is what it was, and that is what it is when you occupy my thoughts. You exist as residue, a diaphanous cooing in my ear, voiced sweetly while I regret.

I fend you off.

But you'll reemerge. In pockets here and there. You always do. Someone will have your eyes, someone will have your laugh. And it will twist my gut. It always does.