Nostalgia: I met her in a movie theater somewhere in coral gables under the half-moon sky and with tears pouring down my eyes.

I saw her again in the lies of a lover, the deceit in our love; its eternal manifestation.

I let her stream through my ears via the words of great artists that I can’t call or text, even e-mail if it was still a transactionless mode of conversation.

I had coffee with her in a make-a-wish version of a Parisian cafe as we bonded over existentialism and emotional ruptures birthed generations before mine.

When I came face to face with her, all I could ask myself was why she was withholding tears from her eyes when the truth we came to know deep within poured out into realness.

When I’d seen her before, all I wanted to do was get lost in her, ask her the questions I couldn’t answer about my past, present, and future, and let myself seep in the emptiness of answers.

But this time, this time I felt her far away from my feelings and tribulations.

Have I forgotten? Am I this numb to it all? Did I really give up my consent to move on when she knocked on my doors and closed my windows?

When she questioned herself in front of me in regard to her morality and looked for a bite I could not produce, all I could do is question mine for thinking about the fact that I have not thought or felt this much distance between my thoughts and her aforementioned facts before this reunion.

How could I forget to remember, to feel the same pains that grew inside me even if just for a few hours, months, a year? A mirage of what life could’ve been with the liar, the ghost, the fool, and the null.

I love them all the same, but differently now. Even when I’m sitting here, having coffee with the same nostalgia that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

I wish I could just see it, hear it, feel how much they flinch when they hear my name, remember my soul, pay homage to my body.

All the possessions I always owned but was willing to grow in tandem with theirs.

Yet here I am, still alone, forgiving her for leaving me again.