You untangle our limbs,
Climb groggily out of my bed.
Redress, tell me not to get up, to salvage a few last hours of rest. Quick kiss, then you slip out into the limbo of the wee hours of the night and the crack of dawn.
Lonely, I instinctively roll to invade the side of my bed you claim as yours,
Thinking if I wrap myself in your sent before it fades I won't feel so alone.
But somehow you never seem to leave a trace.
It's like you were never here.
So I remain lonely.

Punctuation marks the hesitancy in this conversation and
I can't help but dwell on words resting unspoken between
commas, ellipses and apostrophes;the
Spaces between letters where sounds sleep, vibrations
strike empty chords and fall short of expression.

I watched the glory of her childhood change,
Half-sorrowful to find the child I knew,
  (Loved long ago in lily-time),
Become a maid, mysterious and strange,
With fair, pure eyes - dear eyes, but not the eyes I knew
   Of old, in the olden time!

Till on my doubting soul the ancient good
Of her dear childhood in the new disguise
   Dawned, and I hastened to adore
The glory of her waking maidenhead,
And found the old tenderness within her deepening eyes,
   But kinder than before.