Even when the sun set and the wind picked up, she stayed outside. She crossed her arms and her legs to keep herself from shivering, but she refused to come inside. The sky was her only escape. Her head became a statue, permanently posed to look out at the purple sky and the few stars that began to appear here and there. She hadn’t eaten dinner, or lunch for that matter, but she didn’t want to go eat. Her entire world was falling apart. She was slipping through the rocks and flailing to grab hold of anything that could keep her from losing herself completely. The wind blew once more and she closed her eyes. A strand of hair fell across her face.

“Do you miss me?”

“Like hell,” she said and turned to him. He was there again, sitting in the deck chair beside her. He looked exactly like she remembered him, as if no change had ever taken place. Everything about him was the same, down to the way the corner of his lip twitched whenever he spoke.

“Hey,” he leaned forward and placed his hand on her arm. She drew in a quick breath. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

She shook her head, but she couldn’t help but smile. He was wrong- nothing was going to be okay. Things would never go back to the way they were. She had lost the only thing in life that she had ever really cared about. But for this one moment he was here again, and she had to be happy.

“You can deal with this. You can deal with everything,” he spoke in a low hush with a half-smile, “You’ll move on.”

“How can I move on?” she asked, her voice changing pitch suddenly and betraying her emotion, “I don’t know what to do without you.”

He pressed his lips together. “Do you remember when we first fell in love? When things got tough, we created our own imaginary world where we could be together forever with no complications.”

“Imagination land,” she nodded her head slowly and brought her hand up to her face to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, “Whenever I didn’t know what to do, I could just close my eyes and imagine that we were together there. I knew that wherever you were, you were doing the same.”

He nodded. “When you don’t know what to do, I’ll always be right there in imagination land. I’ll always be here for you.”

All she wanted to do was kiss him. But she couldn’t. Her eyes misted over and she looked away. A tear streamed down her face. “If you loved me so much, then why did you leave me?” She brought her knees up to her face and hugged herself tighter to keep from shaking. She felt his hand on her back, consoling her.

Inside the house, a single person woke from sleep, turned on the lights and walked to the door. The person looked out through the glass panes to see a young girl sitting by herself in the dark, hugging her knees. Every now and then, the person saw her lips move and her head bob towards the empty deck chair beside her. The person sighed, turned off the lights and went back to sleep.