In the morning I wake up with the idea of you taking off my clothes, and it isn’t April at all but more like September. And the bed we are in, it isn’t either of ours, and it is something of itself.
And although I am alone in my bed and the windows are open and bright, and the sheets are white, and all of your things are now gone, I can still hear your voice before I open eyes.
But it is the voice from when you were gentle and sweet and still saw me as me. I know the different you’s in ways I do not think you even know. I can see them miles off shore and they battle with one another and slip into bed with me and pull my hair or kiss my cheek.
It is different now though. I think sometimes those who are most near to us end up being the farthest away. And this is only because the relative distance is greater. Because I kept you so near my epicenter, the distance now is something no one else could create with me. The closer you come, the farther you are thrown.
My wanting of things has been changing its melody as of late. I find myself driving along the hillside and forgetting I miss you. Someone told me recently how those spaces will get bigger, how the remembering and the missing will excuse itself for greater lengths each day. And eventually it will not return to the table. I had a dream last night of someone kissing the inside of my thighs and for the first time for as long as I can remember, it was not you.
One night, at dinner, at the restaurant downtown with the salad I like, I had a vision. You and I were sitting down for dinner five years from now, and we were not together, and we spoke like old friends who once were in love and had between them something no one could ever touch. And if we are being very honest, I have known ever since that evening that our shelf life was coming near.
