Semantics

It's been forever, she says.
Forever.
It can't have been forever, I protest. Forever is used too lightly. Too conversationally.
Forever.
What is forever to someone like you, I think and do not say.
Is forever as long as it takes for a bad haircut to grow out
Like that time you got fed up and lopped off your bangs
Hunched over our dorm sink, OfficeMax shears in hand
Laughing with your teeth
It grew back, though, that's the thing.
Is forever as long as it takes to learn all the bones in human anatomy
Distal phalanges, intermediate phalanges, proximal phalanges, metacarpels, carpels,
Scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate
I could never think of a mnemonic device to remember all of them
And those are just the ones in the hand and wrist.
Is forever as long as it takes to find the perfect lo mein
Trying the Chinas Pearl, Harbor, Inn, Taste, and Palace
Before moving to the Dragons of the same.
None were right, you said.
So I kept driving
And we kept ordering lo mein.
Those things all took time. Not as much time as it's been.
Not quite "forever".
Forever is longer.
It stretches, swells, takes up more space than you planned to allot it.
In the span of "forever" you can love a person so much that it makes you feel like a wrung-out washcloth
Or maybe a crushed soda can
Or one of those vacuum-sealed storage bags they advertise late at night
And then hate them ferociously
In a way that scorches your insides
And fills instead of empties you.
But forever is long enough for you to empty again
Day by day
Drop by drop
Until you feel neither love nor hate
Just a slightly foggy haze of regret
When your emotions' object plants herself in your path and says, "It's been forever".
Yes, I agree. It has.
It's been forever.