Absence

With you gone,
the cavity in me
throbs an emptiness
that swallows my heart
and I stumble over the
edges of trivial duties.
The tendrils
and gravity of my routine,
weaken, then snap,
and I begin to notice
the gaps and blanks
between moments
that draw me in .

It starts with the long
silence between words,
like trolls lurking under
the bridge,
threatening to devour me,
bones and all.
I hesitate to begin,
trembling with despair
without your voice
to surround and hold me
in the motion of my day
and deliver me unscathed.

There is an absence in
my world,
which leaves a vacuum
around me, a loosening of gravity,
setting me adrift
between my mornings and
nights.
Until

between cereal and coffee,
I’m tugged unwilling into
the vastness between planets,
lost to the pull and gasp
of gravity,
beyond the redemption of
earth,
without your arms
and mouth to tether me
to your orbit,
and I drift in the chill,
silent darkness.
till the mundane reels me
in and
I finish my cooling coffee
and start my day.
Until

the realization of your
absence severs the
tenuous fleshy threads
that bind me to my
life
and I fall from cleaning
dishes
into the cloying film of
black water,
removed from the bustle
and hustle of driving and
traffic, from
leaving and arriving,
treading water, distant
and removed, bobbing
in the thick ooze that
grasps and pulls, threatening
to hold me under
and I, beyond the reach
of rescue, watching the buzz and scamper
of daily life on the distant shore,
without your eyes and hands
to moor me to the safety
of your harbor.
Then, arrival reaches in
and I’m at my desk,
leafing through work.
Until

the blanks in my life
snare me
and I float untethered,
unraveled,
in the void that your
absence has bloomed in
my everyday and
I become lost between living room
and bedroom,
lost between sheets and
sleep.
With you gone, I suffer the
vertigo of a thousand years
of isolation
in the world, I stumble
and sway,
and fill with nausea over
the heaving desert of mundane
callings and promises.

With you gone,
I become lost
in the gap of
my days
and long for
your return,
to bind together my
fragmented and tattered
remnants
and hold me secure in
your moment and
purpose.