Absence

i am a sad person writing sad things

The absence of you feels like a decade fall. All the light bleeds a different way, without. On bad days, I daydream about being stuck in your room and cleaning. Sorting through your things just to hold some piece of you. In your wake, I’ve crawled to an office job that’s added prescriptions to my routine. I feel old. The kind of old that claims nostalgia resides in trees

in the discontinued pennies we count in passing.

My therapist claims I’ve just been sold a bad deal. Everything resorts back to diagnosis, to the uncommon ridges of my brain. I just think I’m tired.

I think my bed is starting to feel like an alter. Sleep, the only ladder strong enough to hold your steps. Caught between life’s teeth and cheek, there is a continuous waiting. Your retired sorrow molds around me. It rests beneath my shoulders like a tongue.

Hours drag into days, which pulse into weeks. I bide my time and use my hands. Roll over. Create.

How much longer do I have on my back? How many more years will you give me?