Missing You

A hundred writers – better at this craft than I – have written the line “I woke up wanting to kiss you”

But none of them can capture the way absence makes my fingertips curl around the cold

When sleep heavy eyelids open to a lack of you not tangled in these sheets.

None of them can describe the valleys between the shallows of your rib cage when my fingers align perfectly with the half moon curves of your bones

Or the way your heart beats like the waves against a ship’s hull: steady, constant, infinite.

I’ll count the freckles on your skin and connect them like the constellations your fingertips traced across inked skies that night our lips were too scared to meet each other

My lips will graze the rivers of your veins across the plains of your wrists

And I’ll map out the inlets and peninsulas and kiss every callus on your palms borne from carrying joys and sorrows heavier than your eternal soul.

You see, I stare out of airplane windows because every mountain range reminds me of the curve of your spine against the sheets,

And the way the shadows and the light play across the curves in your shoulders are a reminder of where your wings must have been

(In some past life I’m convinced you could fly)

But I think what aches the most is the absence of you and remembering how

We fit together flawlessly like the seam of sea and sky.