Its funny, how nine straight days can leave a gaping void so horrifyingly bloody and raw when they end. Lonely and quiet with very few reminders and mementos. Mostly memories so fresh they feel like they were just recorded minutes ago. You look around the apartment for anything at all that might have been left behind.

Nothing.

Then you spot the flowers you brought for her at the gate. Forgotten and left behind in the rush to the airport, but not unloved or appreciated for the thoughtfulness behind them. No one brought her flowers before. They make you happy that they made her almost cry that you got them.

Looking at them now makes you happy and sad at the same time.

Love is a funny little bug. It's like a virus that gets inside you through any orifice it can find. Usually it travels on a voice and slips in through the ears and heads straight for your vulnerable heart where you have little defense. It embeds itself behind your eyes so you can see deeper. It destroys your self centered thoughts, and puts up a pink glow around your heart. It makes you do things you thought you couldn't do. It makes you strong. It makes you new. It makes possibilities. It makes everything taste and smell better. It sits with you under a tree at night watching fireflies. It makes you sing "Old Mc'Donald had a farm" in the shower. It makes you laugh harder. It makes you smile.

It makes you want more.

Wrapping itself around your heart, it creates a new one. One that is smaller as it breaks in two after the carrier is missing, right after she passes through the security line and moves into the depths of the airport to the gate and airplane that will take her even further away ...... in the wrong damn direction. The heart is smaller now, only half as big, and retreats inward leaving a hole in the shape it once was in the center of your chest.

There are only a few times in your life when a lump will form in your throat.

One of those times is on your way back alone through a terminal, across the street, into the parking garage, out of the airport, and down the highway. Until you get to the front door of your house. Where you open the door by yourself and walk in alone......... and still smell her. Then the lump becomes the size of the watermelon that you never did get to eat. Thats when the virus behind your eyes heats up causing your eyes to water.

Thats when you know for sure that you will miss her until you see her again.

Thats when you know that your life will never be the same again.

Thats when you know that your heart is doing all the thinking.

Its a simple mathematical equation really, this love virus. Take the number of times you think about your self in a day and subtract the number of times you think about her in a day. If thoughts of her outweigh your own, then its as plain as the nose on your face.

It hurts. God damn it hurts.

You walk around the apartment like a zombie and try to think of what to do next. So you sit down and write out what you're thinking.

There is another factor, there is one other virus that breeds in the soup left behind in your chest. Its the thing that makes it all worthwhile and makes you do it over and over again. You feel it right away and it doesn't leave you, You know it wont leave you until you see those beautiful eyes again. Its what keeps your heart from fragmenting even further until there is nothing left.

This particular virus squeezes itself in and around your chest where all the butterflies were, and waits. It fills the void until it can be properly filled and replaced once again.

It's name, is hope.

I hope I see those eyes again. I hope they'll stay forever then.

This hurts, God damn does it hurt.

It's a motherfucker, Being here without you. Getting through a Sunday. Talking to the walls Just me again. It's a motherfucker, How much I understand. The feeling that you need someone, To take you by the hand.

Will she come back?

It depends.