L.A. this last week was a blast. I got to visit Batman and Tito at the Claremont colleges, see the Bodyworlds 2 exhibit at the Cailfornia ScienCenter, catch up with Jihad and Trojan Boy at USC, experience a star sighting by sitting the next table over from Robert Patrick at Benihana Restaurant, enjoy a wonderful home-cooked Easter meal, meet Jeff's Valley friends, eat at In and Out Burger, and of course, cruise the streets of L.A. with Jeff in his '92 Camero. It was quite the spring break.

Now I'm back, and it doesn't feel like a new quarter at all, aside from the switching math out for German again. it's as if I never left. Almost.

His side of the room is clean. I visited his ex-roommate today, just to see what it was like. Maybe even to help me break the habit of stopping by the 5th floor every time I come up the stairs. Safeer had expanded his stuff to fill the room, lowered his own bed, and moved the empty set of furniture around so the bed was against the other wall. It's clear that the room belongs to one person now.

Tell me what I'm supposed to do now. Please? It's that time of the day, the time when I should be doing homework, but instead I go and visit. What do I visit now? Whom?

I remember a time when I could be separated from you and not even be affected. Do you remember those days? While we were in separate cities, whole days passed without us missing each other. We admitted it to each other, even laughed about it. It was one of our reasons.
Now, I go through my daily routine, and it's like a sliver in my finger, a pebble in my shoe. A constant nagging, a pain that won't go away. I don't know how to make it go away.

I should have known that this wouldn't go without consequence. Every earthquake has an aftershock, every splash its waves, every noise its haunting, reverberating echo. Did you try, too, to make it a small thing? To lessen the inevitable after-effects? But that's the thing that didn't hit home until after the fact: the size is irrelevant. The mere existence of those consequences - aye, there's the rub.

Were we right for each other? No, not even close. Did we want something else, something true? Of course we did. but who's to say that what we had was false? In retrospect, it may be the most honest thing I've experienced since I began college. We never deluded ourselves for a moment. Because of that, we were free to be as honest as possible. No mincing words to save feelings, no worries about whether someone was more committed, or more in love.

The hole I never knew I had is starting to show.

I miss you.