I can never quite decide if I miss you more when you are away or sitting next to me.

When we are parted I feel it as an ache,
a permanent tightness of the chest,
a shallowness of breath:
I cannot fill my lungs if not with you.
I go about my day distracted,
spending half my time imagining you by my side.

But when you are beside me it is an entirely different, subtle, kind of pain.
An unrelenting itch to touch you,
hold you,
feel you,
anything other than just sitting here pretending everything is normal.
It is as if you held a magnet next to a paper clip and told the paper clip not to move
that is how I feel sitting beside you,
too close, but never close enough.

So if I ever seem distracted as you talk,
darling please forgive me.
Simply know that your lips have entranced me so,
that with every movement,
every carefully choose word,
every articulated phase,
I find my self using all of my willpower not
to lean forward and kiss them.