Absence Makes the Heart

I turned the key to my apartment; a task so simple as I had done a million times before, almost robotically, expecting the same thing I see each day I come home from a full day of work. Though never was there ever music playing or human chattering sound greeting my arrival, such is a life of a single gal, today felt it was going to be different somehow.

I asked myself: Did I expect that it would be, or was it truly out of the ordinary?

I placed the keys at their usual place, dropped my bag onto the familiar foyer bench, kicked off my ballet flats carelessly in my usual flair, and reluctantly walked into the living room. Stillness screamed all around me. Not the kind of silence into which I had come to assume everyday, this time its presence was palpable. I felt it not only in my surroundings, in everything I touched, but also within.

He was only here for just over a week, a mere short time in a year-long journey of me on my own to have my routines down almost like second nature. How did he affect them so, shake them up like one of those snowy-globes my parents had, until you couldn't see what was inside but the whites coming down in a blur of giant flakes? And even so, it still put a smile onto your face, and dared you to shake it up all over again just so you could see it one more time. How did I come to anticipate seeing his smile, sensing his warmth, and the safety of his embrace?

I saw it and I felt it as he came and he went.

And so the story goes. It will only repeat itself, surely and steadily, and until then, my impatient heart awaits.