Professional Stranger

Your mouth was made for goodbye;
always some iteration of an "o",
as if to say you were never really there at all,
a null set, an empty flutter of the pulse.

A cold emotion stills me.

We make small talk
while I size up the distance--
too many miles
for such a small passion.

I see you now: the traveller,
the professional stranger.
When I go, you hold me close,
to leave your memory clinging,
to plunge your absence prematurely in.