I'm afraid to go to sleep
Because I keep dreaming about you
I feel my eyes getting heavy
  And as they droop
    The faint whisper of your lips across my lids
My muscles relax
  And as they loosen
    The unmistakable feeling of  your hands
      Trailing across my tired shoulders
My breathing slows
  And as it steadies
    The rhythm of your own breathing
      Settles in the space beside me
My eyes close
  And as the darkness takes me
    The feeling of your arms around me
      Makes me forgot why I was ever afraid to sleep

That is
  Until I wake up

Lately I've been waking from my dreams
More unsettled than if they had been nightmares
I'm haunted by the shade of your eyes
As they reflect the fluorescent lights above
I can't shake the phantom feeling
Of your hand perfectly interlocked with mine
And sometimes when I sit down
I am struck by the fact that you are not next to me
Because it feels wrong

I leave room for you wherever I go
I just wanted you to know

The possibility of you
Beckons to me
In a voice like amber

I can almost feel your lips on my neck
And that does nothing
To help solve my sleeplessness

I'm sitting here staring at an empty space
It's not that I don't have things to fill it with
In fact, I have an abundance of things
Thoughts, memories, hopes
But they're all jumbled together
Tangled, like poorly stored necklaces
The chains wrapped tightly around each other
Almost impossible to separate

I could take everything out
Place it all out on a table
Try to gently detach each piece of myself
The problem with that, though
Is that more than a few of those baubles and chains
Were never meant to see daylight
I don't want to reveal the tarnished and rusting metal
The cracked glass pendants
And the lockets never meant to be opened again
Some things are to stay forever
Stored away in the darkest corners of my mind
I have a box on a dusty shelf there
Where they live

I guess I should look for a flashlight
So maybe I can try to sort out the better pieces
I know there must be some treasures there
Maybe I'm just hoping I might have something good left
I don't want to face the possibility
Of finding nothing but debris
Tattered trinkets on a dusty shelf
In the back of a damaged mind