Anniversary.

Exactly one year ago, Bluefish's plane was still yet to complete what amounted to more-or-less a full circuit of the earth.

Yet to complete, but I waited up all night nevertheless - it was still no match for the 24-hour flight she was undertaking, and I'd never have been able to sleep anyway.

The weight of months was upon us, for time hangs heavy when the person towards which everything is directed is located so remotely. The paradox is that a gesture made on a webcam or a voice softening the eardrum through a telephone is necessarily less intimate than its equivalent when experienced directly - yet for all that, I would argue that the former means more.

The anguish of separation - even from that which you have always been separated - is profound enough to magnify every action. I remember being heartbroken by the sight (through her webcam) of Bluefish dangling a leg off the end of her bed as she laid down to type to me. I could observe the movement of her foot, fractions of a rotation, and for reasons I've never been able to fully understand, this caused the most intense feeling of sadness I have experienced. Separation is the opposite of the law of diminishing returns: the less reason there is to become emotional over something, the more likely it is to happen.

I recall being hemmed into the London-bound train carriage - standing room all the way, at something after six in the morning, and then the chaos of the Tube through to Heathrow; clinging onto the loops of rubber suspended from the ceiling to stay balanced in the manner of an acrobat or a windsurfer.

Hatton Cross was the name of the last stop before the airport, and this location I felt was the point beyond which there was no return. In an example of linear time, everything behind Hatton Cross represented a break with mere history, and everything after it the limitless beauty and potential offered by Bluefish.

Now I realise Hatton Cross was no more than a dead end, and of course Bluefish herself would sink without trace after eight more months or so. Older and wiser, I mark the anniversary of her arrival as morning begins to emerge. Later I shall light a candle - as a species we represent past love with the hot little glow which is extinguished all too quickly - and watch intently as it burns itself out, because it doesn't know how to do anything else.