CXXIX

His smell still lingers, for what feels like an eternity, in the room after he has left it. Skin-smell, and hair-smell, and sleep-smell. A sweet fragrance; the sweetest. I pray for it not to dissipate, but the ordinary inevitably takes it's hold, and I can't stop myself from filling up the spaces where he once was. A flash and a dance of splendour and then a long, arduous awaiting. In ardour. In expectation. My own skin can't keep the smell of where he caressed it; can't bottle it up to hold onto. So I wait. And the promise of return tingles every fibre of my being. Will he come again? And when? And how soon? Not for my skin to know. In ardour. In expectation. It awaits.

[Images: Jennifer Stenglein]

CXXIII

I cried like a baby when I had to leave you. Because the truth is I don't like living without you. I don't like the waking, I don't like the sleeping, I don't like the eating, or the walking, or the talking, the decision-making, or the question-asking. I don't like spending a day you don't spend with me. I hate to open my eyes and not see you, even from across the room. I can't see you from across the world. I can't feel your touch. I can't have you warm my cold feet. Or crinkle your face at my strange personality. I can do it all without you but I just can't bear to anymore. And it's so hard. 

I cried like a baby when I left you, because it's so hard not to. And I'm sitting on the plane with fat tears in my eyes trying not to let the distance get to me. Even as it grows. Even as I go farther in the wrong bloody direction.

Take me back, baby. Take me back.