The phone illuminates your face

as guests congregate around the dining table. 

The living room seems like an entire ocean.

We float at opposite ends.

We used to float together.

We shared a lifejacket.

The phone used to illuminate our faces, entranced in a game of TapDefense.

You always let me win.

Staring at your black-rimmed glasses,

I wonder how things have been for you.

A gauntlet of questions, cached in the back of my mind,

and yet I can’t force myself to dig them out.

All those questions that I could have asked a lifetime ago.

Not here.

Not now.

Probably never.

Because you left,

because you boarded a plane to New Zealand.

You took all of yourself there.

You only brought part of yourself back.

Planted like a soldier to his post,

I refuse to move.

Even when our eyes meet for the briefest of seconds,

and immediately move down like strangers on a street.

And I know.

I know from the blue ticks,

from the missed calls,

from your frozen tongue the entire car ride back,

from your forgotten promises.

You take all our memories 

and put them in a box.

Then you lock it and give it back to me.

You swim away.

And in the ocean that was once our kingdom,

I drift away with a box

that was once ours.

Alone.