You

Like a phantom you have haunted my thoughts for days. The thing about ghosts is that once you have seen them you can never forget they exist.

I didn't know you were here but now I cannot do anything without wondering what you are doing too. I feel like a part of me has been missing and that by seeing you it has been returned. Yet the piece still doesn't feel right. It feels as if it is incomplete, faulty, or perhaps not my piece at all but someone else’s. I walk around in a daze feeling out of sorts.

I wander aimlessly around the stacks wondering if I’ll find you here secreted in corners or if I’ll see you haloed in the light of the day as you browse through the terrible best sellers. I wonder if we’ll both meet at a corner and share an awkward apology, perhaps an awkward moment of eye contact when we’ll realise who each other are. I run scenarios over and over in my head playing out every conceivable exchange. I don’t know which ones I want more, the scenes where you have no idea who I am or the scenes where you see me and talk to me with heart breaking familiarity. Sometimes you turn tail and run out of the store, the chimes twinkling frantically behind you. Sometimes you look at me and smile fondly reaching out a hand to take mine and ask me,

“How are you?”

To which I have no words. Even in my imagination I don’t know how to talk to you.

I worry about the likelihood of it happening so much that I become afraid of it. I have anticipated you popping up in the places I least expect, but then they become the places I do expect and so I end up walking around on tense tiptoes looking over my shoulder like some sort of small nervous animal.
I’d been waiting to almost run into you again for five days before beginning to accept that perhaps it will not happen a second time, that it really was a one-time appearance. Perhaps after that you disappeared again. I don’t think too long about where. That is something I don’t think I can agonise over.

It’s Saturday when I feel the charge in the air. It is the same feeling I used to get sitting in the damp dim student union on weekday afternoons. The air feels static and the hairs on my arms stand up under my shirt. I can already feel my skin shrinking on my scalp and wonder if people can see it pulling my hair back. This feeling is the world’s way of telling me when you are near. It has been doing it ever since I can remember. I used to think it meant that we were destined, fated to be together and this was our gift, the power to know when the other walked into a room. I took a deep breath and stepped ever so slightly out from behind the self-help section and there you were with your thick streaky blonde hair swept messily (you always looked so beautifully chaotic) onto the top of your head. It’d been raining and I should have known that it would be today I see you.
It’s so typical to see you again in the same conditions we met. You shook your shoulders dispelling rainwater around you like a dog and marched straight to the back of the store. I turned barely in time to miss you but I caught sight of your neon backpack venturing deep into the back.

Am I destined to always watch you walk away from me?

I knew where you were going and it comforted me to know that some things never change.

It was creepy, I know that, but I couldn’t bring myself to continue stacking copies ‘The art of Happiness’ when I knew you were there. When I knew we were mere metres from one another. I shoved the remaining books on the cart and walked as quickly and quietly as I could to where you would be. Underneath the tacky hanging hearts and silvery garlands you stood running a purple nail across the spines. I told Lesley not to decorate the section like that, I told her it made people feel silly and embarrassed and would ultimately only hurt sales but she said that head office insisted and so if I’m going to apologise for anything right now (or ever) it’s going to be the décor. I hung back hugging the taller stack behind you and watched as you pulled books out and then put them back in. You looked restless. I watched your brows curve over your celadon eyes, your lips purse as you made faces at the pages. Looking at the terrible covers you smiled to yourself making your nose crinkle. They’re so cheesy I wish they would change them for you. I know that to you they are more than shallow romance tales.

I felt my heart beat restively in my chest. My hands start to itch. I had to turn away. I couldn’t look at you any longer and know that nothing was the same. Hot footing it cowardly to the till I told Lesley I needed to take a break.

When I returned you were gone.