Lost

How does one lose a person?

Crumpled up papers lie in the bottom of her bag-hundreds of notes she has written, but never sent. I run my fingers through them, too hesitant to open them up, as it feels too much like an invasion of her heart-the heart that has long forgotten its way.

The smell of her-roses, with a hint of cinnamon, lingers on every piece of paper and I take a deep breath inhaling the hidden words. I never knew she had so much to say. I put her bag down, and make my way to the stained glass window at the corner of the room, prying open the window panes.

These days, I seem to find traces of her everywhere and anywhere I look. Old, faded black and white photographs--her face captured mid-smile, mid-word, mid-frown, constantly moving from the middle to the end. Broken bottles of glass, stained with blood-also hers, litter the alleyways behind her house.

She tried to keep her grief a secret, but it coats and stains every surface of every room she walks into. Her sadness is so infectious that I can feel it burning under my skin, singing inside my bloodstream. She is within me, but she is lost. She is everywhere, but she is never at home. I want to find her, I have to catch her. But when I run, she sprints. I leap, she soars. She is nameless, and I am flightless. So I pick up the faded paper notes she will never remember again, and burn them all to dust.