Runner

I keep refreshing the page, a priest lighting candles, holding my breath like the next flick of wrist might mean something. Her name is gone from my inbox, but I still comb the comment fields, archive tags, shaky alt accounts we never talked about. It’s stupid, this new religion: hitting reload, rereading typos, tugging old scabs just to feel the sting. I can’t believe I keep doing this. I swore I wouldn’t chase her. Though I think she'd like that, I meant it the way a knife means to stay in its drawer. It was the right choice. Somewhere she’s smiling, I think— the kind of thin-lipped, smug faced thing I always liked about her— she wanted nothing more than someone obsessed with her character. So here I am running my hands across the screen— searching pixel-by-pixel in the static for a shape that used to know me.