Hello, my Darling:

Two years ago, it would never have occurred to me that we could be in a situation where I would not purposefully cross the street just to say, "Hello."  There are some people, you see, whose presence you take for granted--whose friendship and love you assume, always assume, will be available and of interest.  But today, while I was busy juggling the mail and looking for my keys, I watched you come out of the coffee shop and walk right past me--and I let you go.  It wasn't conscious, it was simply that I had other things on my mind.  For the first time in forever--in our forever--you did not force yourself into first place; you did not take priority over my every-day, mundane sense of living, didn't explode and spread like birthday confetti or make my lips move through involuntary sounds.  You walked by, without even looking, and I let you go.

This, however--this is not what disturbed me the most.  What disturbed me is that I did not regret it--the chance for a conversation or the slip of your smile.  I didn't chastise myself as I drove home from the post office, wondering at the things I hadn't said or the things I might've meant.  There was no empty sense of longing, no anxiety to gather that moment back and relive it the right way.  Instead, I was faced with that comfortable distance reserved for people I used to know.

When did we become this?

In another life, two years past and tangled in you, I would've dropped the keys and lost the mail and leaped at the chance to carry your bag to the car.  Once there, I'd wind up feeding the meter twice while we talked those little nothings that build to feel like something.  I would've measured time in your breaths and forgotten the unpaid bill, the September chill--the time.  But today, all I could think is that I was going to be late for work--and why hadn't I told the clerk to give me a bag for these stamps and, really, when was I going to learn to keep my keys in the same pocket every time?  I could have avoided the whole mess.

If I hadn't lost my keys, I could have avoided forgetting you.

But I have not forgotten.  I still remember the obsession of new love--hiding around corners to make our meetings look casual and keeping my distance when I wanted nothing better but to take your hand and kiss your cheek.  Late-night confessions and childhood could-have-beens in tired whispers that crackled--kept the air alive.  Our first quiet phone call, our first night in bed--the tears I caused and the tears I carried, and the moments where I almost lost you but couldn't let go.

Yet here, today, it became so easy.  It became a breath of my own that wasn't counted in you; that heartbeat I heard was mine, unhurried by the passion of please come back.  It bumped a little against my chest, but in that, "Oh, there goes so-and-so" way.  And now I'm left wondering if that is what happens to the best of our love.

Because I still suffer the cracks--the ones caused by you.  I am filled with other things and other thoughts, with new and different and supposed-to-be, but it is a body half-full and a soul under siege.  In those hollow places, I am hanging on to what I knew of you and what I wanted to know of me--to the hope of this is it and the fear of never leave.  I suppose I walked away without letting go of your hand, wandering through life with my fingertips on your skin, keeping apart when I wanted desperately to be together--putting off when this day would come: when I would see you step into my life and do nothing but watch you walk out again.

It's just that, two years ago, it never occurred to me that it could happen to you--to me and you.  And I wonder if, in telling you that I love you now, your name would be as numb as those I used to worship. I am afraid to say it.  Although I have lost you, I cannot bear to lose you, and what do I have left to offer but this one word and the want--the ever-present want--of this could be, if....

And now, late for work, I wish desperately that this was not us.  I change my tie and comb my hair to the opposite side and put on my brand new glasses, and I wish to be a different man--the sort who could've kept you.  I drink water instead of coffee and eat cereal instead of snacks, and I do not pause to check for word from you because I do not want to know if you haven't called.  Perhaps, I think, you saw me, too.  Perhaps, I think, you are having the same conversation with yourself--the would've been, maybe--and you have come to similar conclusions.

So I step out the door and go on with my day.  The only thing under my fingertips is the steering wheel and the vague impression that I should still be holding what's left of you.  And I suppose I do, in places you no longer reach and I no longer feel.

This is what's become of us, then.  You are a should've been, and I am a shattered man.  

Hello.