I lay beside you at night and hear you breathe
measure the slow way your inhale fuels your exhale
I lay awake and wonder
what it might be like to lay in a bed without you there
Your hushed and heavy breathing
has become a rhythmic and haunting reminder of our union
Once bliss to my ears
the knowledge of never having to be alone
this night music haunts me now
I run all day
run from the reality of my anxiety
run from the feelings about us I don’t want to feel
I run all day
but when I lay next to you
I cannot escape the tearing longing to be elsewhere
I have seen what my eyes were not meant to know
I have tasted a fruit that leaves all other food bitter in my mouth
I must eat and drink of our love
the sustenance to which I ascribed myself in matrimony
But now I lay beside you and hunger and thirst for another life
the rough bonds of our union chaffing against my flesh
cutting into my heart with tough circles
and tight knots
When the silence comes
I hear your breathing
and I fear these bonds will strangle me
shudder at the pressing doubt
that these coils will ever again feel like security
With the sun I dream of futures for myself
I busy myself with tasks and assignments
goals and lists
appointments and responsibilities
so much that on good days
I can almost forget that I am bound
Yet every night the rising moon signals me
I must return “home”
the place we now share and call ours
jabbing at me that I am not my own
I will never again be my own