I haven’t thought of him much since his grand exit from my life, but occasionally I’ll experience an echo, the phantom sensation of an emotion that I know is expired. Sometimes it’ll trick me, and I’ll think that I miss him, that I still love him, that I’ll never fully amputate him from me. Usually then I count to eight, because I remember once reading about how, after people were beheaded by guillotines, their severed heads could blink and twitch for up to eight seconds.
