Amanda is a haunting. On every street I feel her presence, our shared past inhabiting the city like weather. I was sitting at the bar and I imagined that at any moment she might come striding in, the door swinging open and a fresh smile cutting across her face, and this expectation of the sudden, visual manifestation of my sorrow is the ghost I live with.

Beside me at this bar sat a woman with blonde hair. We were talking about whether it is a good thing or a bad thing to have a large family and there was a look in her eyes that I hope is not present in my own. She looked like she wanted to talk to someone, like she desperately needed to talk to someone. We chatted for nearly an hour, and when she got up to leave there was a pause. She was opening up a space where love might rush in, and strangers, we could have kissed forever in that field, but instead I said good-bye and turned away from, and she walked out the door, now just a little more brittle than when she had walked in.

Everything is punished when love falls away.

Colin