What lingers?

I found this vignette in a notebook from summer 2024 and thought it was worth sharing. I have no memory of writing it, but I'm glad I did. 

Your perfume on my bedsheets the night you slept there, rain-soaked, the small wet stain of your hair weighing down the pillow. The yellowed pages of the dark red book on my dresser, crackling with age: the yellow on my fingers when I make daisy chains. The songs you sent me, the songs you sang, the songs that sounded better when they were swaddled in the lilt of your voice. The longest lines in the emails I almost sent you on grey days but then deleted. His imprint on my lips when he kissed me as dandelion stems scratched my ankles and I pretended to feel whole. The shadow of your bike across my lawn as you ran to me, hand raised in a wide, swooping wave. The fatigue pressing at my eyelids from the night you slept next to me. Everything about the night you slept next to me. The odd, regretful butterflies when I see him, the knife-twist to my gut whenever I see you. The faintest traces of pencil from running my fingers over the note you wrote to me, the faintest traces of summer still clinging to the air. The dried flakes of mascara settling in the grooves of my under-eyes. The tips of your fingers hot against my cheek. The scent of his breath hot against my collarbone. The redness, rubbed raw, on my chest from the gold necklace I was allergic to. The shocking cool of the aloe vera you spread there as I watched your hands, waiting.