Just when I had you off my head

 
I finally started to put away the books, the records, the folded cigarette packs that could only mean you. Packed them in boxes tucked away in the dark. Left them in a room I vowed not to enter.

 
I busied myself with the rest of my life. The breathing in and breathing out, day after day. Trying to forget about that cramped room in the corner that even light was afraid to touch.

 
Everyday, I walk past it. Refusing to acknowledge that it’s there. Everyday, it becomes easier. Until I begin to believe the corner is empty. That all the darkness hides is simply more darkness.

 
Because what use is it, when it always ends the same? No matter which book I read, the hero always walks away in the end. The songs all sing about heartbreak, and cigarettes always, always kill.

 
So I can forget about a darkened room and taped up boxes. But what do I do about the rain? What do I do about the rain that makes itself known, in light or in darkness, and with its first drops instantly call to mind the drenched homeland we share, reminding me that I never escaped you after all?

 
 

 
 

Leave me standing here

 
There is a pack of wolves chasing our past away. I asked it to stand its ground, unwilling to let go, but I can see the terror in its eyes.

 
And so I ask you again, perhaps for the last time, to leave me with something to remember you by. A letter … a lingering touch … or a shirt still tinged with the smell of cigarettes and Burgundy. (I’d ask for your voice, but it already lives in my head.)

 
Give me something that belongs to me. Before they come to tear our history apart.

 
 

 
 

For a thousand days

 
I don’t know where you are. The silence is killing. I feel you in my hand, and squeeze the empty space inside it. Even the air I breathe is lonely and aches for you.

 
I don’t know when I’ll see you again, or hear your voice. Do you long for me too? Do you sometimes look past your drink, into the dim light of the evening, and imagine me beside you? Does your hand still hold the memory of mine in it?

 
My heart is bursting. I don’t know how to continue without you. Even though I know that I will.

 
And I also know that, whatever life I live, my nights will remain the same. Spent in dreams and secret conversations with you. In painful sighs and tears hiding behind a whispered name. In wondering and missing. Just like this, always in love with you.

 
 

 
 

All the pieces of our recent past

 
My days crawl along in slow motion. I walk around only half-present, living instead in my daydreams of being with you. Or even just around you. In my head, I constantly say your name. I love how it feels on my silent tongue, how it rolls effortlessly, endlessly between my lips and that space inside me where you live.

 
What are your days like now?

 
I asked you once if you sometimes think of me. You said, “All the time.” Am I in your mind now? Do you replay our nights together, hours spent talking and holding hands? Do you, too, marvel at how, after more than twenty years, we still can’t stop touching each other?

 
I sit at my kitchen table writing this, but I may as well be sitting next to you in a dark corner, our hands intertwined, our world reduced to those few square feet of space containing us. Together and apart from this world. For that moment, our love is right. And nothing to hide.

 
 

 
 

I’ve been here before

 
It’s very early in the morning, and there’s no one here as I wander around this part of the house. Haven’t been able to sleep lately. Maybe it’s jet lag, maybe it’s you. It’s probably both.

 
I often think about the time in my life when I used to say I’d save my first sunrise for you, how I always wanted to see one with you. Much time has passed, and I’ve seen a few sunrises since then. But I’ve always watched them alone. And they’ve always made me sad. Lonely.

 
I’m starting to realize that perhaps I haven’t been alone after all. Maybe you’ve always been there. Because every sunrise inevitably gets me thinking of you. Of us. And every sunrise, I begin writing you the same letter in my head, asking you to please come and sit with me a while. If I close my eyes and dream hard enough, I can run my fingers across my skin and imagine your hands on me. And sometimes, when the air is still, I can swear it has the faint scent of Burgundy.

 
And so, as it starts getting light outside, I start my letter again. Please come, my love. Sit with me. Put your arm around me, pull me closer, and tell me—without shame or fear of implication—that you love me. That you’ll wait for me. And tell me that, if you could, you’d come home to me someday.

 
 

 
 

Moonlight in your eyes puts a spell on me, and you don’t even try

I drank a beer before dinner tonight. The taste reminds me of our nights together. Soon enough, I imagine that you are the one sitting next to me, and I let the dream linger a little longer.

I know it’s not the honest effort you want from me, but it will have to do for now. The pull of your memory is too strong still for me to begin giving myself to someone else. Even if that someone else is my rightful owner.

So for now, I survive by playing a farce. And hope that one of these days, the pretense will give way to genuine feeling, and that eventually, some part of me will once again learn to love this man enough to make it work.

Until then, I’ll hide behind every single thing that reminds me of you – and there are too many to count – and I’ll keep imagining that you are the one with me. And the dream will linger until my heart can’t tell the difference anymore.

It all feels so wrong

I’m about half an hour away from home. Where I have someone waiting for me. This is the place where I should belong. But I can’t help missing the part of my heart that remains too many miles away. The part that gives color and meaning to my life.

I’m tired. I know now the meaning of weariness. And I yearn for you. Many times each day. Every day of my life. All it takes is for evening to fall. Or the taste of cold beer on my lips. The strains of one of our hundred songs calling me back to you.

I don’t know why I continue to take one step after another, taking me farther away from you. Maybe what keeps me moving is the knowledge that this is what I should do, and the promise you extracted from me to give it one more good try. Even if my heart isn’t in it anymore. Maybe if every other part of me takes the leap, one of these days, my heart will follow suit.

For now, I console myself with the thought that this – even this – I do for you.

I’m still sleeping with your ghost

I’m sitting in an airline seat flipping through the movie channels. The cabin attendants are serving a meal again, but I can’t eat. My heart is heavy and you’re all that’s in it. Every song about love and loss and longing and aching and loneliness – they all remind me of you. Of this sweet and unbearably painful thing that binds us to each other. It’s a killing despair that I can’t live without.

I think about the last time I saw you. I watched in my rear view mirror as you walked away holding our music in your hands. In my head, Grace Potter sings of losing time and sleeping with ghosts. I close my eyes and remember how you touched me. The smell of your shirt. The taste of your kiss.

How is it possible that I am even more completely in love with you now? How can love grow so insistently deep when we are ripped apart by so many thousands of miles, endless days, and separate vows and obligations? Why is it that whenever I see you, everything feels like the first time all over again?

How is it that a love this strong and permanent just isn’t enough?

I’ve been thinking about you, baby

I’m laying in bed waiting for sleep to come. You’re in my head — been there all day. Everything I feel, every glorious new experience comes with an instinctual urge to run to you and tell you all about it. It’s a reflex I’ve been fighting for twenty-two years now. After all this time, I’m still losing that fight.

I want to get up and write you a song. Some tune that says exactly what you are to me, with lyrics that’ll maybe make you shake your head and wonder how it is that I’m still so completely in love with you. A killer song with no answer for what becomes of us, only the unshakable determination to find a way to somehow be near you again.

But I can’t write songs. Not songs like that. And I can’t change how things are between us, and what we are to each other. And so I just keep laying in bed with you on my mind. Because in truth, that’s all I can do. Regardless of what they say, love really can’t move mountains. If it could, you’d be right here next to me, and I’d be in your arms tonight instead of writing you impossible letters in the dark, dreaming of an impossible life with you.

And now it’s only me again

The past months have not been kind to me. But even in the midst of all the drama, the thing I dread the most comes in less than two months, when your life takes a major shift and you slip even further away from me. I listen to our songs and it feels like my heart is slowly shattering to a thousand irreparable pieces.

Why do I feel like I have to prepare to say goodbye to you? Why does it seem like everything is inching ever so surely out of my reach?

If I asked, would you promise not to disappear from my life? Is that assurance even within your power to give?

I love you so much it hurts when I breathe.