Goodbye
We try to make the heart forget. All those lost sounds buried in the silence of our breathing, every word drifting between the telephone line. But we never forget. At least, I didn’t.
I miss you. As ridiculous, as absurd as it sounds… I miss you. I miss your accent. The way you’d look up at the sun and make that little smile I… miss you. I miss you showing me the trees and the walls of buildings I could never see. I miss hearing your dialect and your laughter; the way you’d explain the covers of your songs and the shows you loved. I miss the way that when I’d call you at 3pm, to you it would be night… sometime tomorrow.
I miss waiting for you to call. I miss holding my hand up to the screen of my phone, some part of me wishing our hands could touch. I miss you. It’s ridiculous; 3,000 miles away, and I miss you. Two years later and I… still miss you.
The part I hate the most is that I can’t remember the sound of your voice anymore. I deleted the one picture that I had of you from my phone back in September, when I thought I’d moved on. And I have no voicemails, no videos, not even texts. I can’t… remember you. And every day that goes on, another mile rises between our continents. Every second you’re not here, I forget a little more about Australia.
Maybe that’s okay. Because you hurt me. You hurt everyone that I loved somehow, on a Discord call on a Friday night on a date I don’t remember with emotions I’ll never forget. But to be honest, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I wasn’t ready to block you from my life. I wasn’t ready to remove your number from my phone. But I did, though you’ve clearly never left.
I wonder if you still think of me sometimes. I doubt it. But I wish I could call you, even though I’m charged fifteen cents a minute. Because I miss your continent. I miss a place I’ve never seen. And all I could ever do to know you were there was to ask you to look at the stars. To look at Vega, which can be seen for over 18,000 miles of our planet. Some nights I would hold my hand up to that star, wishing I could touch it, so maybe some part of us was together.
I wish the wind that ran through my fingers could have been your hand. I wish the light from that star was your smile as you brushed your nose against mine, leaning in for a kiss. A kiss from a ghost.
Two years later, some nights, I still look at Vega. And I wonder how you are. I hope you’re doing well. I want you to know that I forgive you. And even though I’ll never hear your voice again, I wish you well.
I hope you have a life as amazing as the two months I spent with you. Thanks for inspiring me. Thanks for showing me a world I may never get to see.
Until we meet again,
Adeline
