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After all the time we spent talking, crying, dreading your leaving, kissing and holding each other and wishing it would never come, all we had before you left was a short kiss and "I love you." Then you were gone, out of sight. Maybe you could see me from the windows of the train, but I couldn't see you; the lighting was against me. I like to think that I saw your silhouette pause and turn toward me, but I can't be sure.

I hesitated as long as I could without looking pathetic or crazy before I started down the platform stairs. As I passed the level of the platform, I could hear the conductors closing up the stairwells and the hiss of brakes releasing. The cramped, long pedestrian tunnel under the tracks felt wide open as I walked back to the parking lot on the other side. I could feel—more than I could hear, at any rate—the train rolling out of the station. By the time I crested the stairs on the other side, your train was out of sight. You'd disappeared again.

I couldn't stand the sound of music on the ride home. The silence felt better somehow. Perhaps not better so much as more fitting; your absence was a presence unto itself which demanded appropriate accompaniment. The isolation would not bear the tinny strains of club music through my phone's single speaker.

The house was still empty when I arrived. I unpacked and did laundry, mostly to keep my hands busy. The personalized mug you gave me filled and emptied again a few times. This loneliness was different from the last, but they were close bedfellows. This was an emptiness, a complete void in which the only sensation I could feel persistently were the memories of your kisses and bites upon my lips. The washing machine laughed in your voice.

My family came home later. They'd brought some beer from a craft brewery for me to try. Again the mug did its duty. After a short chat with my mother, she asked me a simple question that almost made me cry. When it comes to you, my heart's stitched right on my skin.

Here I sit, breaking the last promise I made to you—sappy, cloying songs pumping through the speakers on my glass and wood desk—and even as I write this the last two words I never said echo through my head, rest on the tip of my tongue, only too late.

Don't go.