“I have never forgotten, and I can’t imagine you have, and I’ve thought of it over the years. It was so good, when it was good, I kept thinking. How could it go wrong?” – George R.R. Martin

I was 20. I had four time zones set on my phone. I think the funniest part about it was that I checked them so religiously. My boyfriend at the time was foreign, but even he didn’t have a place in the faction. The four differing time slots were composed of each place he had been (that I knew of) over the past four years. And when I looked at them, I felt as if, for a moment, I was with him again.

When someone leaves, you hold on to pieces of things that make it seem as if they had stayed. Whether conscious or not, we all do this in some form. Mine are the cards. Each boyfriend I’ve had (there hasn’t been many) has given me a card or card(s). I have a perfect stack of old greeting cards for birthdays, graduations, anniversaries; you name it, shoved into my bedside table. I’ve held on to every single one, even the 3-foot tall one I got from my very first boyfriend in high school that I hadn’t even ever managed to tongue kiss.

Between him and I there had been a lot of material objects I could still hold onto. Cards and a pressed rose from our first Valentine’s day when he asked to win me back. Even old cell phones I couldn’t ever part with due to the fear of losing all of the T9 texts on love, fighting, and ultimately the heartbreak; and everything in-between. But all of those things were from years ago. Now I was in college, and he well, he was wandering the world, trying to make himself whole.

I’d trudge through the snow and stare down at his current time zone, whatever tropical wonderland he was in, I could be there too for a moment. Australia was my favorite. It would be tomorrow where he was and I’d think to myself that he had an entire day on me, an extra 24 hours. And with each passing hour I was hoping he was on a track of fulfilling his inclination to himself, but mostly, hopefully, a day closer to sharing a time zone, with me.

By the fourth zone, years had passed but I still held on to the hope. The hope of waiting through all of the different places, phases, and the hours in between. I knew that he was my end game and that over the years he would continuously wander. But I knew he would always find himself home. Home, I always thought, was me. Now I stare at the varying clock hands and wish I could turn them all back. Back to a time when I could make the decision to not be so naive and blind to the fact that he wasn’t ever coming home.

Maybe in that time I could have worked towards letting go or throwing out the greeting cards. But ultimately, I can’t bring myself to regret it. The clock hands are still poised perfectly in each of his past destinations, and the beautiful heartbreak of the ticking clocks is just another commodity that will find it’s way into my bedside table.