We had gone out for drinks to celebrate J.’s birthday the day he finally came back. He had a habit of disappearing, his body turning into a dense fog before metamorphosing into tiny crystals of ice where he used to be. Sometimes he would send a postcard from an unknown country, a picture of him floating on the surface of a dark lagoon, the bioluminescence glowing underneath the pale expanse of his back. He sent me a message from outer space once, his voice muffled and cut by fuzzy static, a sharp hiss, and I imagined him floating in nothing but his skin, blinded by the sparkle of the stars stippled against the cosmos, tethered to nothing. Even with all of our friends, as I looked at him, his gangling limbs sprawled out limp next to me as though they no longer belonged to him, his silver ring cool against the bone jutting out of my wrist, I wanted to tell him about the letters I wrote, how I folded them into swans with unsteady fingers and sent them down the river to him, ask if he ever read them, but I could never say the words. On the walk back home, J. was holding a yellow balloon that a friend gave him, and I saw it sway in the wind on its thin string, felt it ghost against my skull before slipping out of his hand. I have spent lifetimes watching you become missing from me. Prayed to a God who does not answer. But for now, you are still with me, gazing in awe at the shrinking speck in the night sky, our one small moment drifting away, already gone.