It began with an absence of routine, lasting just long enough to disrupt the tenuous contact. Upon return to normalcy, another kind of distance had slithered in. Schedules suddenly conflicted in increasingly complicated ways, until a month had slipped by unnoticed.
To bridge this distance, cards were sent as mute reminders of dates remembered, tokens of time enough spent to choose someone else’s words to send instead of something truly personal. Phone calls became a yearly event. After such long periods, there was no accurate way to summarize all of life’s events between then and now. We were left awkward and wordless, listening to the other breathe across the line. Even that thread was sundered.
Eras of life came and went. If any effort was made to reconnect, it was born of half-ambition and lost in the swirl of two distinctly separate lives that no longer crossed. Rarely, a memory of our time together would manifest like the notes of a forgotten melody, worthy of pause for the wistful sadness it brought.