The day you left I walked back home inside my thoughts. I looked at the Christmas lights the same way I did when we saw them together for the first time; walking around strangers, intertwining fingers on the beach, or holding hands on a cold bench right where we had our first kiss — being all these places as unimportant as the souls who crowded the avenue that same day with their noisy feet, but perhaps that now, they remain meaningful to me, and only I have known why.

The day you left I stayed awake for quite a long time. I waited for the clock to make a...