Ahem.

I clear my throat.

A-A-Ahem.

I do it a little louder.

I've perfected that look where you extend your neck and your head juts out and you scrunch your eyebrows just slightly as if you're holding one magnet in each hand and they're trying to snap together but you keep them far enough apart so they don't. After the obnoxious throat-clearing, I use that look. Extend, jut, scrunch. Slight head shake. Lips part like I'm about to say something real nasty but I'm won't. Not like I don't got things to say. Just who will hear them?

Not the man in the corner.

The man in the corner's who I'm looking at. I'm aiming that look at him right now, and he ain't saying nothing. He's staring back blankly with those grey eyes, wondering if those words are ever gonna come out my mouth. He knows what I'm about to say. I just know he does. I'm waiting for him to say it and he's waiting for me, as it's always been.

So we sit in silence.

My eyebrows break into a full-out knit-together glare. I sit back in my chair as my eyes widen. What's wrong with him? He used to fill the silence, but these days, he keeps everything to himself. He used to turn on the light and dance with me, but now his feet are rooted to the ground and I can't get him to budge. He used to grow flowers outside my window that would blossom every morning, but now the only thing blossoming is the silence between the two of us. He used to tell me I was worth more than the stars and the moons and the planets beyond our own. Now when he speaks, it sounds like we're oceans apart, like we're communicating through parallel dimensions that don't match up closely enough to let us hear each other's words. We're magnets just barely touching, but someone's hands are keeping us from coming together.

This man in the corner. I can't recognize him.

My eyebrows take a sharp turn upwards.

"Will you stop starin' at me?" I finally say.

But he won't.

He never will.

I lost him a long time ago.

He forgot me. He moved on.

But I'll forever keep the statue of his former self in the corner of my mind.