Ghosts

If there was one thing the world did not understand after you left is that my love for you was unchanged.
That my essence, even though robbed of most of its purpose and by definitive means its self government, still worked like clock work around yours.
That my eyes, even though deprived of your physical countenance, could still gaze into the ethereal and find you there unchanged.
But it shouldn't have surprised me, and it really didn't, that they would not be able to grasp the depths of the bonds that tied our souls together.
In the end, were they us? Certainly not.
Hence I did not begrudge their looks of sympathy, at times of apathy.
Their words of condolence and most often than not of non-to-subtle rebuke.
Their claims that my claims were nonsensical based on the vane fact that they simply could not fathom that as long as I was there so would you be.
What did surprise me, is the ease with which I up and walked away.
Miles and miles and miles north until it occurred to me that perhaps you wanted to stay in that house that held our precious memories and that perhaps you would rather I too stay.
Would you return if I waited?
But if I didn't wait, would I miss your return?
So I walked back.
Miles and miles and miles back to that house where perhaps once you returned, we'd inhabit together.
My favorite times, in the period in which I was awake but I wasn't alive to the pleasures and the joys of a world without you, were hot summer nights.
The ones that held all the suspense of rain filled clouds not yet heavy enough to start their drizzle and in which the air would be dense with suffocating humidity.
Admittedly thunder rolled in the distance as if announcing your arrival and with one particular deafening rumble, you'd suddenly be there.
And it was as if you'd never gone.
We'd sit side by side, slowly once again becoming one as our heartbeats attuned their melody to each other and our breaths danced in tandem and our minds seamlessly merged as though the time in which they'd been apart was a mere illusion.
It was as natural as replacing the oil on an old car and turning the ignition, immediately the spark lighted the motor and everything would work perfectly as it should.
Was a car not meant to roar with life petroleum in its veins?
Thus was it with you and I, in our hot summer nights of silent meditations.
I never once saw you leave.
Dawn would pierce with a single sun beam through the night, distorting the clouds.
And you'd be gone.
And I could never tell if the light had chased you away or if you'd been long gone by the time it caressed me.
But it never mattered, because my heart would still be singing your melody while my mind told me of your stories.
And I was okay.
And while I looked on to the wonders of another morning being born, I knew my smile was not only mine.
It was ours.
After all, was my love for you not unchanged?