I know the name. I tasted it the first time I looked into your eyes, the sensation lingering even in the arms of another. I felt it to the depth of my being as I gasped under your fingers and lips and tongue, finally. I heard it in the words you spoke to me that night, your outline shivering, illuminated in moonlight, on the surface of the water. I began to know it the last time I held you.

I know it intimately now. I curl up with it every night as I close my eyes. I reach for it in the mornings in place of you. It whispers your name when I’m happy, sad, drunk. It lives inside of me, gnawing at my heart and picking at my brain. And oh god, it hurts. It hurts. It hurts. I’ve begged a thousand times to an empty heaven to be free of it.

“What is it, girl? This thing that tears at you so?”

Its name is Longing. And I bear its weight everyday.