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Wet slush splashes under your feet, splattering on the toes of your shoes. The falling snow tickles your face, a numbing anesthetic. It catches on your eyelashes when you tilt your head up to let out a sigh of smoke. Pausing, you exhale, watching it and breath mix together, indistinguishable. You reach out, the strands curling and breaking around your fingers. It winds down your wrist like a hand about to grab before dissipating into the foggy night.
You try not to think of Elliot. You imagine a muddled image of him turning into smoke, rising up and out of your head and joining with the rest of the ephemera. It's a useless exercise, even when he leaves the forefront of your thoughts his presence is still there. Like the air has condensed around the empty form of his figure, leaving a just tangible impression that something's missing. You brush up against it often, can feel the pressure lying against your side, or sliding against your arms.
Not like a ghost. You refuse to call it a ghost. Elliot's not dead. There's somewhere you can't reach, locked behind him when he left. A place you've only caught glimpses of in your sleep. It's only then that the pressure pops and releases, it's the only reason you know he's there.
No one knows about those dreams. You're keeping them, squirreling them away until you can draw a bigger picture.
Maybe out of selfishness, too.
The streetlight washes out your hand as you hold it up to take another drag. If you unfocused your eyes it would melt into the snow. You haven't been out in a while. People keep acting like your belief is contagious. Their hands shrink back, bodies angle away when you bring it, him, up. Is it easier to bury an empty coffin in the back of their minds? Maybe an empty coffin is easier to fill than an empty room, memories making up the weight of a body. You can't imagine pressing an ear to his door and hearing the sounds of anyone else.
You've become almost territorial over it, started baring your teeth when someone goes to grab something that's his. It's not right, you want to yell, it's impolite. He could walk in and see it being used without his permission. Maybe he'd be mad, or maybe he wouldn't care. You're not sure anymore. These little things have started to slip. Sometimes it feels like you'll stand at the edge of his room and find that his possessions have begun to blink out of existence as well. You wonder when you'd go. Maybe after the frame of his bed, or between the mugs sitting untouched in the kitchen cupboard. It would be an inevitability, everything else has already slipped away - your career, your friends, pet projects that lay half finished. You can't let go of him yet, you can't let go of yourself.
Suddenly, you feel like a kid, lips wobbling and nose scrunched. You try not to breathe deeply, you know it'll only cause the pit in your chest to expand and finally swallow you whole. There's no reason to feel loss, you reason, he'll be back.