He passed in and out of my life within a year and I haven't seen him in about as long, a brief ripple in time about which I am positive he never spares a passing thought. Time, for me, has faded certain details about him, but others remain as clear as a reflection in a mirror and just as sharp and painful as the jagged glass that cuts when the mirror is shattered.

I can no longer call up all those details of his face that I had seared into my memory. Was that dimple in his left cheek or the right, eyes hazel or brown? What I do remember is the way I felt when he walked into a room, how my heart would break when he left it.

Before he left we settled what we both knew but had left unsaid all year, that he liked me as a person in general and that I was a really sweet girl, but that he just couldn't see me the way I wished so desparately he would. I picked up the pieces of my shattered heart and crawled away. I won't lie to you now and say that I don't miss him still.

No matter how many times one tries to glue a heart back together it never does come out the way it was before it broke. It's strange how the heart tries to mend but still leaves the scar of what it has endured. Maybe that's the best kind of heart, the one with the battle scars to show where it has been, what it has lost and gained and lost again. The heart that knows sorrow also knows what it can survive, what it needs to keep dear forever, and when it needs to let go.