goodbye

You're facing her, in a bus terminal, or a train station maybe.
You forget sometimes, but you're both holding suitcases and you're talking and laughing, and one or other of you will remember when it's time to go.
This is how it always is, stranger-talk understood familiarly, on the way to the same place.
People criss-cross the station, shouting in bunches and singing and hurrying, even passing between you sometimes.
You get up to get some coffee from the stand, fresh from laughter, wait in line, and think about the conversation.
Talking and silence, and talking and silence, and you can't remember any more what it was about, as always.
It's like it never happened, the gap; or rather, like you'd always thought it'd be- the gaps didn't matter.
Ha.
After refusing to shove people at the counter for long enough, someone finally gives you coffee.
It's the wrong kind, and they charge you too much, but you don't have the heart to fight for the right kind.
Walking back, you realise you were carrying the suitcase all the while.
When you reach the benches she isn't there.
And you know that she's gone to catch her train, that it isn't the same one as yours, that she'll learn to manage to catch it on time, as you will.
Is it alright ? you ask yourself, sipping the scalding wrong coffee, blowing on it, whistling in between.
It isn't- you swerve to avoid a little girl insistent on running pell-mell into you- but it will be.
You pick up speed as you catch sight of a terminal clock, running onto the platform as the conductor starts yelling, get into your seat.
Everything is, sooner or later, and you will be.
Rummage for a napkin in a pocket, and wipe the coffee from all over your coat while drinking what's left of it, straight up.