“He asks about you,” friends will say, a glint in their eyes like they know what was true four years ago is still true today. I shift and glaze my eyes in trained apathy, mechanical nonchalance and reply carefully. Maintaining my guise of disinterest must be the 8th wonder because no frenzied words come spilling out. I’m aided by a familiar metallic taste; My molars, created and evolved for cutting into flesh, keep my hardest working muscle restrained. Then the conversation shifts and yet my tendons won’t stop straining, pressing against my skin. My knuckles never whiter, I fight every cell in my body trying to grab at something that is no longer there. Soon after, the cells are stagnant in everywhere but my hands and somehow that’s always worse. My body realizing there’s nothing it can do, every ounce of energy is forced back into the center of my chest. It is solid and present.  My hand remains idle, touching my neck teasing with the notion of forcing the limb through my sternum and ripping it out. Every word, every feeling, every part of you that haunts my blood and chest and lungs and mouth and hands. If I could scrape off my flesh, I would, it’s not mine anymore because you, you, you left yourself there. I cut off my hair, clumped curls hanging off my head because you liked it long but it grew back just like the feeling of missing you, you, you, always you.

I can reinvent myself and my words but I’ll never have a good enough reply to “he asks about you.”