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she always leaves pieces of herself as if to insure i won't ever forget her.

it's affective. because i never do.

this time, she dropped a pair of gloves next to the dog's cushions. as always, when i find these pieces, i immediately text: do you want me to send them to you? even when i know her phone is off and her plane is either in the air or preparing to go there.

some people, you watch them and they make this all seem too easy. too glamorous, too practiced. for me, it never gets that way. we've been together eight and a half years, and this is the fifteenth month we've spent apart. each visit through our distance changes. each month we are apart, we change. every time is laced with pain.

sometimes, it's easy to lull oneself into accepting this as normalcy. to think: my solitude is the fabric of life now, the fact that i don't care for my thoughts, my body, my space, my surroundings--this is all a part of the daily routine. i begin to forget that once, with her, i would take care, i would seek comfort in every aspect of my living. now, a patina of sorrow covers each square inch of my being, and when my conscience recalls the warmth for a split second, i feel as though i will break.

my friend told me, you've been through this before, it means you can get through it again. then he added: that may not be much of a comfort.

it's not, really.

every time we see each other again, i'm reminded of what i've been missing. that reminder makes me petulant, resentful. i'm reminded again of my humanity. of loving things i once took for granted, of the fact that i don't need to merely survive an emotional subsistence, but that we are meant to flourish, together--struggling, negotiating, forward looking, arm-in-arm.

i sit under the covers of the bed we just shared: where i wept just minutes ago in a primal scream, where the sheets still smell of her, where we laughed this morning enjoying each other, where we fought savagely two nights ago.

each time she comes and goes, i worry sickly during her flight. a contracting sensation in my belly keeps me still like waiting for a predator to pass. i hate missing her.

i wish she'd come home.

miscegenate

if you wanna know what happens late at night in the middle of the blue-green l.e.d. lights of sanyo and sony and moonshadows falling across the spread never never is the stillness still enough for too long into the gloaming of the after where in a waiting room she has a gown tattered from too many launderings that faded puce with faded navy with faded mauve-maroon maroon marooned on the little pad of never-ending transfusing to come back and late at night i listen carefully to see if i can hear the youth of them plea and conquer and not-stillness wanting and wanting and wanting to a point that when the fucking may or may not stop something inside me says that we're fucked not completely but to a holding stand still not fucked and empty is form is void is wanting is slow is never filled to the hums of what wasn't but what might and the rain on her lashes looks too much like tears like scrubbing my back in the shower until it drains and falls and bits of me enter the sewer go to processing come out the aerator into the air and up to the clouds to the sky to the sun to the moon and come come come down down down falling on her lashes in the middle of the street where apologies were meant but unsaid and the gravel was new hampshire red and the flowing was form was empty was fucking and yet we knew the difference.

i want i want i want to see you here right here before me naked and whole and young and old and when did it matter which she was her like we could tell them apart in the first place racing blood through bare breast it's still warm warm whether it is her or her or even the forbidden her we drank from her and with her and through her i want i want i want to never have that taste of metal come through my cheeks and out through my lips that forgiving never offered and youth missed not forgotten not even wanted anymore because who wants to be 30 25 20 18 anymore anyway my greys her greys our greys are medals are talismans and fuck the fuck the fuck the want want want.

don't go.

dishes stacked on each other in a precarious heap slowly making a long low sustained stench like the faint echo of her breath in the unit where the nurse said they call it neuro breath hard breath breathe again breathe more come here to breathe by me with the warmth of fragrance only you had she had even the forbidden she had that time when we couldn't quite say the words because words felt like nails felt like stones felt too much like hurt even words of love of want of good luck when we could not even for a second think to say it back and instead we walk out to ask the nurse a question and when we come back she's asleep again not yet forever but for the last time.

i want her i want her i want her back and back and now and here and here and closer and never again in the same way but whispers of memories held close and never shared i want her near i want her in me i want inside her and her and her and her and fuck and fuck and fuck and not the same difference same different will she hear me does she hear me if she hears me will she say and if say say truth or lie lie lie with me once again and again and just once if we suffered enough when was the war won?

i want want want again
no more
more and more
not loss
the same
to change
to forever
for never
i want want want the her and the her and the her
a trinity of never and again and not ever

treyf. treyf. treyf.

come back
return
don't go
just once
forever
not ever
now go

go forth
go into the emptiness and beyond