It never strikes first when the wound is fresh
It waits, waits as long as it needs to
It watches you think:
‘maybe I’m just a fast healer. Maybe they just didn’t mean that much to me.’
It waits until you’ve found what you think is peace with the situation.
It waits until you are walking along that old street on a Thursday at three
and smell someone’s cologne from a block away and your brain immediately associates that smell with them and suddenly there is this
little lump in your throat that hasn’t been there for a long time
It waits until you pass that store name you made fun of together five months ago because the i looks like an L
That store is closing down
And all of a sudden you can’t breath
It waits,
especially,
for when you are spring cleaning your closet and find a folded note that must have fallen down the side of your drawer and gotten lost because you could have sworn you threw out all of their ****
And of course you read the note because
How could you not
And you remember why you threw their stuff away
Because then
Then it hits you
One thousand times stronger than it should ever be