I watch the hands of time tick in your eyes. Like a stopwatch counting towards the second this conversation can be complete. Behind us. Never to be discussed again.

I knew coming into this meeting that there would be no niceties. No warm gestures or affection. And yet as I sit here across from you, practically a stranger to a man who once knew and owned my soul, I can’t help but wish that I could reverse the hands of time that have consumed your eyes. That may be for a moment instead of counting down the seconds to when you can get up from the table and never lay eyes on me again, you would want to revisit the place where we met. Say hello to the moment you knew you loved me. To dwell briefly in the years when you cherished every breath I took, sound I made, step I took. The days when you saw my heart and you tenderly cared for it.

I ricocheted off the walls of my own thoughts as soon as I hear you speak, realizing that you strategically avoid using my name or looking into my eyes, or acknowledging my existence. I am nothing more to you than a fellow patron in the coffee shop where you grab your morning latte. No more important than someone from the third-floor in accounting, that passes by your desk on the fifth, en route to a finance meeting. Just a stranger getting a haircut next to you at your biweekly barber appointment. If someone saw us through the window they would never know that at one time no one made you laugh harder than me. Or that I had that special place where I like to put my face when you brought me into your arms. My place.

But now there is no place. Just me with my regrets and mistakes.

If I could reverse the hands of time I would bask in the warmth of being your only. And I would make sure that you were my only, my most precious.

I capture one last look before your eyes cast down to where your hand guides a pen that will erase every final tie that binds us, and I swear I could see that stopwatch freezing for a moment.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s cruel that I would hope you hadn’t moved on. But I will forever believe that maybe, for the briefest moment, you are no longer counting down the seconds to your escape, but you found yourself revisiting the place that we met. The moment you loved me. The years when you cherished every breath I took.