When We Are Apart

Your absence drapes the room thick  

as syrup, a slick shadow lingers.  

I think of your green eyes, two  

lanterns swaying in a midnight fog.  

Your lips, soft bullets, quiet thunder,  

crack open the moment I close  

my mind's window. Your hands—small  

churches where I kneel, your feet  

slender compasses, unmapping my  

loss. I try to carve the memory  

of your softness into the stone  

of this moment, but it won't keep.  

The air here tastes almost bitter  

without the salt of your pulse,  

without the blood in your gaze  

lifting my shape out of shadow.