Landed: back in the Toronto airport, back in my regular life. Swaying softly against my suitcase on the subway. Lugging those pounds of dirty laundry and well-loved sex toys down my little street and up the steps in front of my little apartment building. Everything feels so little now, in memory’s shadow of New York, Matt’s New York, even me.
The day is a blur of catching up on emails and catching up on sleep, and then at night, Matt calls me. Their sadness sounds heavy in their voice, the same way mine feels in my chest. “How are you?” I say, the way people do when beginning a conversation.
“I miss you!” they whine in this way that’s like repeating a prayer. In long-distance relationships, “I miss you” becomes an incantation, a mantra, a forever-truth bubbling under the surface of every conversation and sometimes demanding to be spoken aloud. I miss them too, already, so much that I start to cry when I say it. But crying is okay.
“I cried when I left work today,” Matt says, trying to soothe me, “because I viscerally realized you weren’t going to be in my apartment this time when I got home.”