I feel you in velvet.
In dark, drowning blue.
In ambling jazz.
In the taste of red wine smooth
on my tongue, like you were.
I feel you in empty spaces,
that could’ve been full but
instead ring as hollow as church bells.
I know you when at night I close my eyes
and wrest with my hands and thighs and skin,
trying to coax them to remember you
the vivid way my mind does.
I can hear your breath wild in my ear;
and the way you prayed my name,
and the way your heartbeat slowed
when I guarded your dreams.
But when I look into the cold, still,
photograph eyes,
I do not know your face.
I know a name, an image, a date.
That is all.