Seasons

“What was it like?” he says, his voice so low I can barely hear it over the record playing in the corner.

“What was what like?”

“Everything. All of it. The summer, the fourth of July, the cooler weather, your birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas. I missed it all, and every day, i would wonder what it was like.”

“You know what it was like. You called all the time.”

He shakes his head, staring past me out the window, to my neighbor passing by with his dog on a leash. An ordinary sight to me, but I suppose not to him.

“That’s not the same thing,” he says finally. “I wasn’t really here.”

“But I told you about all of it. It rained on the fourth of July. Everything was anticlimactic and we stayed inside to watch movies instead, but somehow that was better. Thanksgiving was loud and crowded and I don’t remember much else about it because I was too busy missing you. Christmas was strange and different and yet exactly like you’d remember.”

“You’re missing all the details.”

“I wasn’t focused on the details.”

“Because you were too busy missing me?” He looks at me with a glint in his eye, like he’s sure I’m teasing. I wish I had a way to make him see that I’m not.

I missed him so much that all the seasons blurred together. The holidays were empty shells of what they used to be - days marked by watered down celebrations that felt like memories before they’d even begun. He says he missed it all but what he doesn’t realize is that I did too. I missed it all for missing him.

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