To you, That summer, leaning against a bus window, I once caught myself imitating the way you used to talk. Those words were never mine, and yet they came out of my mouth so naturally. Startled, I looked at the morning sun lying long across the seats. I closed my lips so I wouldn't say them again. But today they came out again. Choosing water at the market, waiting at a crosswalk. A voice not my own slipped from my mouth. By now, those words sound like they belong to me.
Looking out the bus window, I suddenly saw someone in the very same posture. The rhythm of their fingers tapping the window frame was so familiar that I watched a long while. That night, washing dishes, I tried tapping that rhythm again, and it kept coming out slightly different. Only then did I realize that place had been emptied.
That rhythm your fingertips made, my fingers followed it too between the sounds of dishwater. My memory arrived late, so the tapping at my window today felt like an old sweater left quietly in the mailbox. Rather than filling the empty place, that sound let me know how deep the emptiness was.
Each time those words left my mouth, I found myself gripping the bus strap tight without knowing it. Like an old habit, the body remembered first.
To you, does the warmth of that bus strap still linger in my palm, I wonder. This morning, rolling up the sleeve of my gray coat, those words came back to me. The more familiar they grew, the farther you seemed to drift, so I walked a long way along the river at sunset. The wind dragged my shadow out long. Now I sometimes take that bus route again. The hand not holding the strap hangs awkwardly in the air. The habit hasn't left my body yet.
Waiting at the checkout, I saw the person ahead take a block of tofu from their basket, and I picked one up too. Even though there was already some in the fridge. Somehow that kind of choice didn't feel strange.
So that evening I opened the fridge and took out the tofu. The wrapper, which I couldn't remember putting there, felt oddly familiar in my hand.
Every time those words leave my mouth, I think of the receipt wedged in the gap of a bus seat. Today I tried saying them while looking at the umbrella stand by the door. Somewhere along the way, I've started talking like that too.
Then today, I think of the silence pooled in the place where I started to say those words and stopped. Beside your umbrella stand, I swallowed them once more. By now I can't tell whether the words are coming to resemble me, or I them.
At the checkout, I looked up at the sound of a stranger's voice, but they weren't looking at me. The evening sun lay long across the counter.
That evening sun, I remember it at that same length. Leaving the market that day, I found myself murmuring in your way of speaking. The sun stretched my shadow out so long that it was as if you were standing beside me.
Early one morning at the market entrance, I heard water splitting and splashing from the end of a hose as someone washed down the ground. That sound still lingers in my palm. Even though the water has gone quiet again.
If the drops that flew from the end of the hose still rest in your palm, I'll say nothing while that dampness dries. That sound will outlast anything I could say.