How could she forget. 17 years divorced and they were strangers. They’d pass each other on the trail, running in opposite directions. She offered a smile that looked like she remembered who he was, but it was only a smile. Like the smile of senility. The kind of appeasing smile like people give to someone they want to keep steady, who they fear might go off the rails emotionally. A generic smile that meant nothing and he knew it. After a hundred of them cast his way on a hundred passings in recent life. It finally was clear, the smile meant nothing. He meant nothing to her.
How could she forget so much of their lives? It was like he’d never existed and he just couldn’t believe it was possible. He was forbidden to talk to her, a self-imposed rule to appease the girls. They worried he wasn’t balanced to dwell on it, he needed to move on they said. She wasn’t the same person anymore, they said. He couldn’t believe it. There’s no way, no way someone just buries all the joys and struggles. All the swapping of their souls, their dna. How could she forget herself.
He walked the earth, missing a part of his soul. No one but she could fit that place. He tried with someones else and no ones else could ever fit.