And When We Meet Again

M : Do you remember the days when I stared at you, from a distance, like there could not be anything more interesting and different than your face, your strange blue eyes and the
soft laughter waiting behind your lips to fall like a fountain of tulips? 

W : I saw a different man, a different nose and eyebrows too thick for my liking, a sadness beneath a battered smile, a slow blinking as if time held no meaning anymore, a grave shake of the head as if the world had been conquered and spat out and nothing remained to be achieved, to be played and forsaken and loved. 

M : Do you know that the evening mist was just an idea, like your footsteps tinkling like fragile winter bells was an idea, like the magic in your words was an idea, or maybe a dream, or a thought that made my heart feel significant?  

W : I saw him put out his hand, dirty and crumpled like a wasted oil painting of a promising landscape, I felt him press my hand like a tired man, dead passion resounding in a soft squish, I felt him say Hello like it was being repeated in an eternal phone conversation, I felt him like he was not there, I felt him like a stranger for the first time since I lost him. 

M : Do you know I told you love was what departure means, what the beginning of absence made you feel, and you shook your head and took my hand and felt it against your ears as if I was the only sound you wanted? 

W : I saw what I would not have wanted to see, what was worse than absence, than a memory which felt like needles and numbness, I saw a memory extinguish itself and become nothing. 

M : Do you know?