Her hair smelled of cigarettes and loneliness even while smothered in my affection,
And her eyes glazed over when she spoke to me for too long,
Like she was trying to pretend for me,
But I could always sense the progressive disconnect.
Her mouth smiled with sad eyes when I held her hand through town,
And I knew in my soul that our love was already dead,
But I still let her wander around my life like a ghost for months
Unable to bear the pain of reality.

Everything reminded me of her.
When I went to get coffee on Sunday mornings,
I thought of the time she kissed me for the first time,
The snow falling from the heavens,
The February wind breathing her hair over her face.
I thought of her when I skimmed over the newspaper,
The family circus comics I remembered she said she loved as a child,
Back when we were cocooned under the vast ocean of linens in my bed,
When she still loved me enough to laugh with me,
And her feet lay warm, entwined with mine,
Not so ******* cold.

I even thought of her when I was alone,
How much her eyes reminded me of melted milk chocolates,
All the weird facts she had memorized,
The way she always pecked me three times before going in for the ****,
The way we were so in love.

I am still in love.
We are not.
But we
were.