It wasn't the same,

laying in your bed,
Touching your flesh.

It wasn't the same.

All those months I spent missing you, haunted by the secrets you told me,
in that alleyway
somewhere in Columbus,
all your secrets of loving me,

it wasn't the same.

My skin didn't spark from your drunken fingertips
and your lips didn't taste like they used to,
back when they were all I could taste,
when everything tasted of you.

And you were sweet and frightened,
vulnerable,
giving up the pieces of you I had sought for endlessly,
these last three years, giving me everything you had.

But all I remember is feeling cold, Shivering under the blankets of your mattress on the floor,
and all I was thinking about was work in three hours,
and my laundry in the dryer, back at my parents' place.

And you followed my skeleton with your hands
and traced the writings on my skin, whispered that you loved me,
that I was the one that mattered,
the only one that made you feel alive.

And I glanced past you at the clock and debated whether I wanted coffee on my way home.
Then once the lights began to rise and you had gotten off enough for the both of us,
you begged me to lay with you and sleep the day away,
told me to hold onto to you and never let go.

But I got up without saying goodbye, and drove to work, smoking my last newport
never looking back at what we had been,
all those years ago
in a dark basement, somewhere on Susan Lane.