It has been four months since I’ve last seen her, and her absence is like a crater in my heart. At night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling and feeling phantom sensations of her fingertips running across my chest and the warmth of her breath condensing on my neck.
I feel like half of a person without her. Less than half of a person, even. Like perhaps a past version of myself would not even recognize what I have become.
There was nothing harder than to say goodbye to her, so I never vocalized those words. I held on to that hope for so long that she’d come back, but I watched her walk away, and I think I knew. I was fooling myself, but I knew she wasn’t coming back.
I dream of seeing her, being with her, but even my dreams pull her away before they end. I can feel my own passion erupting in the air around me so thick that I can’t breathe, and then I wake up in a cold sweat clutching the sheets of the empty bed beside me. I wonder, how do you feel without me there? Is it anything like I feel? Is it anything like you’d hoped it would feel?
Even during my waking hours, I can close my eyes and see her there. I see the same scenes playing out over and over and no matter where I am, I break down – fall to my knees and suddenly taste the salt of my own tears.
You were never supposed to leave; never supposed to do this to me. You didn’t even have the decency to leave me in one piece, so how am I supposed to put myself back together when I am scattered apart like so many petals of a rose?