After You

I went to your house, your apartment, after you had moved out. It was changed in a way that was subtle, but stark. The negative space you left stung my eyes and made me look for you in nooks and crannies. The table that I carried to my car was gone, replaced by a fake maple impostor, a college suite monstrosity, impossibly blonde. The colors on the bathroom shelves — the reds, yellows, greens, purples — were now only blacks. Void, vacuous, stern blacks. Empty blacks. I scoured the shelves for the book I gave you, but you had taken it. My heart leapt at its absence, I don't know why (I know why). I went to the roof as usual, with your roommates of yore, and spoke of family and vocation and art and anger and fear and loathing and kindness and hurt. We were more quiet than usual, more reserved, quicker to forgive, slower to challenge, to retort, to defend our opinions. We ate and drank and sat in chairs as the rain touched us, then soaked us, then relented, leaving us to silence. We were our fathers, and their fathers, and the fathers and sons of all men. Those pioneers, that lonely bunch of hearts and heads who knew no more and no less than we knew that night. Somehow our place in the universe cemented itself then and as deeply as your absence was felt, our presence was confirmed as souls bound, at least for a moment.