and there were days when your kisses left hot imprints on my skin, smoldering.
     i would shove my head under covers and hope to keep the glow effervescent, my fingers tracing the pieces of you left in me.

a deep sleep would try to pull me through soft linen, it whispering
      "chase dreams here and not while you're awake."

but a hum in ears and a missing dip in a mattress,

cloth pressing against my skin, wrapped around my ankles:
a reminder that you were still not there.

and now i still shove my head under covers, chasing a heat that envelops the places between my thighs and shuns my feet from frost-

yet,
I can never find the warmth that you'd provide.