Sometimes, you can feel someone's absence, more palpable than their touch, or the scent of their aftershave when they were still there with you. There's a kind of electricity that hangs thick in the air and weighs on you, reminding you of the way the atmosphere was once filled, but is not now. Sometimes Absence is so electrifying that the hairs on your arms tingle, and at every car honk outside or creaky sigh from the walls, you lift your head up sharply, gaze drawn to the telephone, convinced that it will ring in only a few minutes. The strange waviness in your chest will still as you pick up the receiver and hear the voice that has been absent to your ears, and yet is still so familiar in your brain. It is a voice that echoes soundlessly in the quiet between beats of your heart.

   Absence can make your heart beat faster, or slower. Some days your whole body strains with the effort of futile searching, or waiting. Other times, your head feels stuffed with cotton and you sleep for hours and hours, too heavy and numb to roll over, or get up. Tears can flow openly, or be held back by burning lids that long to release the hot buildup of emotion and memory pressing on them. When tears flow, are memories released with them? Do they evaporate, or soak back into your skin to be remembered and chewed on again and again?

   I feel his absence sometimes, more present beside me than his flesh was; every breeze a false promise that he whispered to me when we were together. Listening to the radio has become an experience. Some songs are more dissonant; too many carry the tide of the past on their radio waves, or blaze with the truth of NOW in the notes, in the words, and in the spaces between both.

   Trying to express Loss to anyone seems futile. On the one hand, everyone's met her, and possibly it feels the same for them as it does for me. Loss, though, is never solitary. With her comes Anger, or Rage, and Sadness. Sometimes there is Bitterness, or Spite, or Guilt that nibbles at your insides like a baby bird. Sometimes with Loss comes Jealousy, Nostalgia, or Hope. Very often, she is courted by Fear. But all of Loss's companions wear masks, so it becomes impossible to tell one from the other, or to know if anyone in the world has met Loss as you have, with the same entourage, or if they are always met in a different guise.

   So eventually, we all sit, and watch, and wait for time to pass. We wait for Absence to remove his icy fingers from our necks, to break apart like wisps of smoke and leave our rooms, our routines, our dialogues. When the walls sigh, we sigh too, and stop looking at the telephone. Eventually Absence will pack up and leave, and stop stirring our senses, or dulling them.

   Perhaps the hardest thing was hearing his voice on the line. I had given into the temptation of calling. Staring at the phone had obviously not worked its magic, and waiting on a false (and indeed whispered) promise of forthcoming communication had begun to bite at me. Eventually, the rope I kept up as a barrier, like police tape (don't cross this line or you'll regret it) pulled tight and snapped. And before the ends of that rope could lash back and whack me in the head, my hands were already upon that phone and dialing the numbers by memory - oh! Still by memory! My own mind is treacherous. It's too bad the rope hadn't been strong enough.

   Two rings and then a voice, unfamiliar, answered. But it was him. His voice was hollow-sounding, without the warmth and welcome I thought I remembered. He answered, "Hello?" which was why I didn't recognize him, even on his own cell phone. Where was the clipped, "Hey" that I was used to? The talking was awkward. We stumbled over words like "yes" and "no" and "I am." Absence was making his presence felt in every pause. I would gaze to a blank space on the wall where a photograph once hung, or suddenly realize that I was wearing the same pair of jeans I had on that day. It was hard to pretend this didn't move me. My voice betrayed me with every syllable.

   "So what are you up to... now?"

   Fear and Hope battled over my vocal cords and tongue. I felt as though I were watching the conversation unfold from somewhere miles away, deep inside myself. Hope would force me to ask simple questions to try and coax from him the answers she wanted to hear. Was he happy? Did he miss me? Would we speak to each other now? Fear would add, "Or is this it, then?" And a burning tension clung to the words that only intensified with every long pause between question and answer.

   From my haven inside myself, I watched as tears built up and got forced back behind eyelids, as my voice became stronger, and the questions flowed easier, and then ceased to be asked at all. I listened as we talked, as we once had, about nothing of importance. We spoke of vacations and jobs, classes and hobbies. Anger boiled somewhere in my gut and longed to surge forth from me, but something kept it down, soothed her with reminders that no good comes of threats, and to fight now would only bring more grief.

   A long silence. Hope began to ebb as he mumbled excuses. "I have to go now. Need to finish my laundry and grab a bite to eat."

   Panic made my toes and fingers tingle. My voice wavered as I said, "Well, it was good speaking to you." Did I mean that? It sounded as though we were business partners gone separate ways, and not lovers that had somehow forgotten how to love.

   "If we can just talk about normal stuff, like this, I think I could keep in touch," he said.

   "Oh," I replied. "Me too," I added.

   "Then I'll email you sometime. I mean it."

   Just like you meant it last time, I thought and tried to say, "OK," but instead I said, "I hope so."

   We exchanged our good-byes. I felt a huge chasm gaping before me when I-love-you was not said by either of us, and I felt like I might pitch myself over the edge of it and just fall until I hit the bottom, and hope for my brains to be dashed out against jagged rocks, and for Sleep to come and shelter me in her soft and antiseptic arms.

   I held on to the receiver for a long time, steeling myself against the impulse to throw it, or cry, or scream. It hadn't been a horrible conversation, and that was what irked me most of all. I had felt anything but normal, happy, or simply curious about his life. I was a hunter that was starving and trying to sling arrows through his heart, hoping to release a desire within him that would match my own. When that didn't work, a beast within me raged and wanted to strangle him with hands as large and calloused as a giant's, with claws like knives, and crush forth from him a word of tenderness, to make him regret.

   I wanted him to regret walking away.

   I wanted to forget that I loved him.

   I wanted Absence to break apart and let me sweep him into a garbage bag, tie him up and toss him to be carted away on the next truck that passed by.

   So now I sit, and watch, and wait for time to pass. I am letting Loss keep me company for a time. She's a good entertainer, with all her companions. I let them come and go from my room, routines, and dialogues. It is almost spring, and I think she and Absence are growing tired of me. Underneath their masks, Jealousy, Fear, Rage and Sadness are beginning to yawn and stretch uncomfortably. Absence has already started packing his belongings from my home. Sometimes, I can hardly even tell he is there. One morning, soon now, I will wake up from a fitful but quickly forgotten dream, and I will be free. Very soon now, I will be free.