Tracy.....
She didn't say goodbye.
Not properly.
Just one last glance through the back window of a moving car,
her hand pressed to the glass like she could hold me there.
She mouthed something I didn't hear.
I still replay it like a prayer I never learned right.
---
After she left, school was a ghost town.
Not because anyone else was gone —
but because everything I looked at reminded me of her.
The chapel steps.
The back corner of the library.
Even the sound of chalk on the board —
I swear I still saw her handwriting beside mine.
---
I kept writing her letters.
Every week.
Like clockwork.
Not hopeful. Just… desperate.
Like maybe if I told her enough stories,
she wouldn't forget the ones we made together.
I told her about the teacher who quit mid-lesson.
The cat that started sleeping on her old windowsill.
The girl who asked if we were ever more than friends.
> I told her I didn't answer.
But the truth was: I almost said yes.
---
The first reply never came.
Neither did the second. Or the third.
Still, I wrote.
And wrote.
Until the letters stopped sounding like me.
---
I asked the postman once, half-laughing:
> "Do you think someone can forget their own handwriting?"
He didn't answer.
Just handed me back another envelope.
This one unopened.
Marked: "Moved. No forwarding address."
---
I walked home that day in the rain.
Not because I liked the cold.
But because it made sense.
It matched the hollow inside my chest.
---
At night, I whispered into my pillow:
> "You said you'd never leave me completely."
> "Where are you now?"
---
The last letter I wrote was the shortest.
> "Did you love me at all?"
I didn't send it.
I just folded it once.
And put it under my mattress like a wound I wasn't ready to clean.
---