A Voyaging Lover

I often lose myself in feigned disinterest, in the slight smile and methodic nod, yes, she’s doing well, she’s crossed into Germany now, she sends her love. I want to tell them all that your love is mine and mine alone, that you write of mountain tops and the tallest trees, of the people you meet and the languages you speak, but that you never ask how our friends are, and even if you did, I never know where to write you back.

I lose myself in memories of your eyelashes as they grazed my wet cheeks; don’t go I’d said, again and again, till you’d gone for good (and then I said it once more).

I lose myself in your absence, trying to fill the void you left within me, but I can’t be us both and so I am lost in the spaces between my fingers in which yours belong, I am lost on your side of the bed as I face the emptiness that used to hold my bones, I am lost in my solo heartbeat as it begs to hear yours in return. 

Most of all, I lose myself in illegible postcards, marking every place you’ve been without me.