God help me I believe it every single time.
We spend two weeks like we’re making up for something.
His hands and his voice and the window every night.
My dad laughing at the table.
The garden in winter.
The movie room.
All of it.
• • •
One night I have my face pressed into his neck and his arms are around me and he smells exactly like he always smells and I think —
this is what’s real.
Everything else is just distance.
Distance is just geography.
Geography is just a problem with a solution.
We have a solution.
We’ll figure it out.
• • •
January.
I go back.
This time without my own hoodie.
I left it on purpose.
Some stupid superstitious thing.
Like if I leave something here he has to still be mine.
Like it’s a placeholder.
He texts me a photo of it on my desk three days later.
You forgot this.
I left it.
Why.
So you’d have something of mine. So you’d remember I’m coming back.
A long pause.
Longer than it should be for what I said.
