I'd always doubted that there would ever be a day when my heart didn't ache for you.
How could twenty four hours pass by without a single thought of what once held enough power to make us change everything we believe in?

I feared I'd never stop waiting for you on a burning ledge, dipping my toes in the lava that we had always begged to be sand,
just to watch you turn back around before you could even feel the steam
or the sweat beading down your forehead.

Life keeps a tally chart for each time my mother is right.
She was right about the love and the hurt that lingers on and she was right about the noises in your ears, years later, that sound an awful lot like their voice right beside you.
Now, add another tally for "moving on", because that ringing doesn't happen so often these days
and your voice doesn't cast that spell on me anymore,
the one that levitates my body across the distance between us
until I'm near enough to remember why I loved you;
I don't care to know anymore.

Could it be that now, finally, you can appear without destroying everything in your path?
Could it be that now I am still standing when a thought of you forces its way back to me;
that my chest feels no more than a quicker step and with one deep breath, I am honestly and truly okay?

. . .