I swore I saw you 7 times this morning
Through sleep coated eyes
a fogged up car window
and the freckled nape of a neck that did not belong to me
But all they were were fragments
Sharp shards of fading memories and lingering lips and the way the 6am sunlight flooded your dull carpet
when we were both clumsily drunk in a golden morning haze of slurred "I love you"'s and the myriad of microscopic beauty neither of us could drink enough of
Your skin was all my mouth wanted
Your hands were all my body needed
And now the seasonal cold sends the same shivers down my spine and the familiar flush to my cheeks as your fingertips did when all I could think was how ******* far I had fallen
For you
I could never get closer
never close enough to you
Skin to skin
Heart to heart
And still not enough to satisfy the aching lust coating my lips or the stinging of tears in my eyes when I knew this was real
You are real
You are mine
But those chapped lips are not yours and those eyes are not the same shade of sad pale blue and you would never walk with your hands dead and lifeless and limp by your sides the way they do
Flashes of days long since passed and desperate leaks through a closed lid full to the brim with memories
Reminders that you are not here with me
you are not vacantly bumping into me on your way to somewhere significant with the illusion of importance
you are not cautiously hunched over a rigid steering wheel
knuckles white with the grip of your rapidly aging fingers focused on exactly how long you have left to live and the distance it would take for it all to just end
Each one is just an outline
of a past too surreal to have happened
To someone like me
With someone like you