Must be the clouds in my eyes

He didn't look back as he walked through the gate, Henry. Not that I expected him to when I pictured the scene in my head but the way it turned out I almost imagined he would. The last hours spent together and the things we said, the things we didn't say and his Dior cologne, it's all infused in my summer clothes and the skin underneath.

I still can't shake the feeling: us holding hands in a convenience store on 8th Avenue (me holding his more than anything), minutes away from the green mile cab ride through Lincoln tunnel all the way to Newark. He pays for the water, jokes around with the clerk and holds the door for me, the perfect gentleman with that perfect effortlessness.

As I pass him he leans into me, buries his face in my hair and whispers through the noise and the traffic: "I love you so much". All the rest is silence and an impermeable darkness before my eyes, like breathing under water or trying to wake up from a bad dream. I don't remember speaking to him before we part at the airport and he's walking away from me, it's the first of July and he doesn't look back.