i missed your skin when you were east,
yearned for your touch as we slept under the same stars
and yet you were miles and an ocean away from feeling
my hands touch yours and my mouth love your lips
as we both looked at the same moon at different times,
and i felt cold raindrops hit my face while you
watched as apple blossoms glittered in the sun;
you studied words written long before our time
and called me late at night to whisper flowing stanzas
of iloveyous that were smoke in the blackness of a room
while i listened and we both pretended not to hear my tears
become stains on a pillowcase that did not feel like mine
(for the absence of your scent on it, and because it was not).
at day, i surrounded myself with things that could not be further
from everything you loved, if only to not think of your smile.
i swung scalpels like heavy swords in an eternal war
against the cruel sisters who had chosen to separate us,
as if the miles between us were their scissors to our pieces of string;
and i calculated numbers that told me people's fate
while remembering how you always hated mathematics.
your words were like balsam to my soul, the way i hoped
i could one day be for everyone, and you always
seemed to suffer so much less than me, because i did not know
of the tears you shed after putting down your phone.
you missed my lips while i dreamt of you at night,
and as the atlantic roared between us, i thought how
fitting it was that tears are made of saltwater.