Don’t Miss Me Quietly
Not when the shower water sends goosebumps down your back. Not when you walk through town and see the place where we first kissed, outside your old apartment in the glow of the faded streetlight.
Don’t miss me at 3AM when the house is filled with the hum of voices, the lights dance on the walls, and beer cans cover every surface. Don’t miss me when the music pulses in your ear drums and you’re surrounded by so many hands, so many bodies, so many faces, but still feel so empty.
Don’t miss me when the sky is barely light and you reach across the bed for me, touch the cool fabric of the pillow where my head used to rest.
Don’t miss me when you should be sleeping, when you know I’ve already gone to bed, miles and miles away.
Don’t miss me quietly. Not your head as our song ques on the radio. Not when the shower water sends goosebumps down your back. Not when you walk through town and see the place where we first kissed, outside your old apartment in the glow of the faded streetlight.
Don’t miss me timidly, with words that only cross your mind, notes written but never sent, messages saved as drafts. No, miss me loudly. Shouts, screams, statuses, regrets spoken to life on your lips, the lips of everyone we know. I want to feel that you miss me in the core of my soul, feel your longing like an ache in my bones.
I don’t want that 3AM kind of lonely, the scared to say anything, the missing me solely because you’re in the dark with only our memories to keep you company.
I want you to miss me like a pull in your chest you can’t get rid of, an ever-pressing thought, not just late at night, but in the middle of the day when you’re sitting down to lunch and look out the window at the sunshine and are reminded of you and I skipping rocks by the pond.
I don’t want you to miss me quietly. In the words you never say, in the pain you hide behind closed blinds and blank faces and shots of bourbon lined up on the table.
I want to know. Want to know that you’re still there somewhere—that heart, that mischievous grin. And I want to know that you miss me too, loudly, like words transferred from mind to page, given to the world to see. 