You live in the spaces
between sleep and 2 am.
And I'm stuck there
clinging to memories
that fade like water colors.

Things like your hands
pressed against my body
and those kisses that we
took for granted
in the dark rooms
we called ours.
Things like your eyes
when you needed me
enough to admit it,
and your laugh
breaking my grey silences.

Those small fragments
are ingrained into my brain,
holding tight and overgrown
like lichens to a stone.

It's the things that slip,
like our last kiss,
or those songs
you were always writing
while I was thinking
you could have tried harder
to make us right.
The small details,
your freckles and scars,
and even the hue of your eyes,
are harder and harder
to recall.

Night after night,
I try to conjure images
of your poltergeist smile
and question my sanity
as I get stuck on your eyes-
were they green or were they blue?

And I try to remember the truth
of it all- five years of ugly truths
that beg to be ignored,
but I force them in
and look them in their
pallid faces.

The words sting just as much now
as they did then,
when I let them.
And when I finally close my eyes,
I can still feel your hands
creating bruises like fine art.