No Matter How Hard I Try, Sometimes I Can’t Get You Off My Mind

Sometimes I can’t get you off my mind.

I had a dream about you last night. In it, I had to leave you. Because you wanted me to go. It wasn’t so far off from reality. I woke up, and for a fleeting second, I could still feel your presence in the darkness– my head on your chest, your left arm wrapped tightly around me, holding the pieces of me together.

But that feeling didn’t last. Reality set it. In my dream you were here, but in reality, you were gone, fallen into the distance, a memory whose touch I will no longer recall. One day.

And when your arm slipped into the past, when it let go of me, I broke.

Underneath all the covers that I could find, I shivered. My bones cold, and not the kind of cold that blankets could fix. It was the kind of cold that came from the inside out. Frozen by your words and by your absence, this was the kind of cold that lingered.

If I moved too much, I would shatter like glass. I tried to stay still and fall back asleep, into a dream where you could be beside me all night long. Hoping to never wake up if that meant being with you, I tried to sleep.

But sleep wouldn’t come and neither would you.

Just like I couldn’t find your touch, I couldn’t find my breath. With a cinderblock on my chest, I couldn’t fill my lungs.

My eyes adjusted to the 4:00 am darkness. I couldn’t breathe, but I could see.

I wanted you here.

I wanted you gone.

You were fleeting but still, this shattering, shaking, shivering feeling stays. And I lay like that for days wishing you knew.

Sometimes I can’t get you off my mind.

But I want to.