distance

I ran a marathon last week.

You're nodding as you say it, but eyes cast shyly towards your boots. With your knit cap pulled tight to your ears, and only the smallest of glances upwards when our eyes catch, then flit away, an endlessly repeating cycle of "will-they-or-won't-they," we're just two crabs in a bucket pulling each other down and getting nowhere for it. Holding back a smile, you are the picture of humility. At least, I imagine so. That's how you always were with me. I don't need to see you to know which mannerisms go along with this tone of voice.

I hear my own voice speak, although I don't recall willing it to - That's amazing, congratulations. Not too much training without your shoes, I hope.

This earns me a laugh, but it sounds tinny, distant, and maybe it is the phone connection, another reminder of the 2000 miles between us, but maybe it's because we both can feel the distance, and you're slipping away.

Maybe, in the time since you've gone you're no longer humble or shy, with eyes that flit between mine and your hiking boots. Maybe instead you've become someone else. I think that this is too good to hope for, though. Imagining you moving on without me as someone new would be a comfort, and what I feel now is far from that.

No, no shoe-less running this time.

Good. I'm . . . well, I'm proud of you. That's really cool, big accomplishment.

I can almost feel you steady yourself with a breath before you speak, and when you do, it's quieter, nearly whispered in a hoarse tone.

Thank you.

Regret. I can feel it. It's not forced, but the words do not thank, either. They say 'I'm sorry.' I don't want pity. You know better than to ask about my life and job, and, mercifully, you do not, so as not to force my lies about them. I almost say, knowing that you would understand and follow the conversation even as we once did, inferring meaning from one another and replying to unsaid things so that those around us even were incapable of following, "That had better be an apology coming from accountability, not pity."

But I don't say this. I don't say anything except -

Yeah. No problem.

I don't say 'You're welcome' because I am telling myself that you are not, in fact, welcome. But that is a lie, too, albeit only to myself.

I know from the silence you have read between my pauses, if only to recognize that I am holding back in a way I once would not have. But you cannot call me out on it, because you, too, are holding back.

I should probably get going.

You nod (I imagine).

Yeah, that's fine. I've got some work to do too.

'Some work to do.' Once, you might've said 'I've got this deadline coming up for a project and I can't figure out this one line of code that's tripping me up', or 'I'm going to walk on over to my garden and do some weeding,' or 'One of my students asked for help and I have office hours coming up,' or 'My kids at youth group challenged me to a basketball game so I've got to go practice so I can beat them.' There are a thousand other aspects of life you once shared with me, and I with you. Now we have both reined it in, and as unhappy as I am with 'Some work to do,' perhaps it's better not to know.

Okay. Alright, well, see you, I guess.

I don't wait for your reply before ending the call. I won't, in fact, see you. Sitting outside for this was a mistake, because all around me are signs of spring, and that means birds. You know, like the ones you know every name for and their calls and their coloring and their habits.

I pick up the bit of pinecone I've been running between my fingers, my nervous habit on hearing your voice, and flick it at the tree nearby and the female cardinal that I pretend not to know by her brown hues, orange beak, rusty red streak on the wing. Side-affects of you in my life. Aftershocks. You are gone and the distance grows further with every moment. I cannot unlearn your voice guiding my thoughts.

You don't know how good you have it, birdy.

She flutters away in protest but I don't see it. I've already walked away by then, unsettled with the knowledge that the man I've known for five years isn't gone at all, he isn't someone else now, he's just gone elsewhere and is living his life without me in it. Mourning is not a luxury that I am afforded.