What particular particle
Of the self
Left itself behind
In your absence?
What form of matter
Is this
That moves
When all else in the night
Sleeps soundly?
Because here I am,
Stirred so,
My body jerked alert,
My eyes wide open
And my senses
Shouting to me
That you’ve just left the room.
And yet,
I know deep within
The deception
That resides in this thinking,
I know this feeling
Lacking in fact,
I know this belief
To be hallow of truth.
It is not
And cannot be,
In any reasonable way,
Your scent I can smell
Still sitting in this now chilly air.
It is not,
And likewise should not be,
The soft shuffle of your shoes
I can hear crossing the hall.
Tell me now,
In all seriousness-
With my conscious mind in control,
How I could believe it to be
The touch of your hand
That brushed me from slumber
Or the gentle kiss of your lips
On my neck, so soft,
That teased me out of a dream?
Why is it that now,
So much more than before,
You are the resonance of every
Waking thought,
As if all else
Were but secondary servings
Of something less substantial.
I am failing
In these nocturnal
Awakenings
To understand
How your absence
Speaks more about you
Than your presence,
All memories
Now more concrete fact
Than what was formerly a reality.
How does this present
Present you
More to me now
Than in the past?
I held your hands,
In those final moments,
Before you found your freedom
As the darkness
Released you finally
While everything else lost itself-
For what seemed like forever-
To silence
And a darkness of another sort
Fell upon my life
In your passing
And floundered to find its exit
Within me,
For so long after.
You see,
My dilemma,
My dearly departed-
I thought you gone,
I thought us done,
I thought our forever, over.
And yet,
Here I am-
Sitting up alone
Where once we lay together-
Blind to the sight of you
But convinced
Deep down,
In the depths of my soul,
That you feel me,
Hear me
And see me.
I know, with every ache of this solitary existence,
That you have left this earth for good,
But I cannot explain,
In any humanly perceivable way,
How much I feel you haunting my heart.
