there is nothing quite like being with you ...

sitting cross-legged on your warm crumpled comforter in dim amber light
with hunched backs against the white stone wall,
silently working to piece each other together,
merging thoughts and shoulders,
falling into each other's gravity and orbiting like stars–
we couldn't figure out
how to get any closer ...

we lived in shoeboxes then,
in ***** laundry and ramen-flavored freedom,
the soundtrack in our background
shuffled steps and muffled laughter through thin walls,
pencil scratches and elevator dings,
wooden doors and heavy coats,
cars in the snow rushing by our open windows,
hot cocoa, creaking bedsprings, and
singing–

I have been listening for the music in the things here–
I have searched in comforters, in stone walls,
in laundry and ramen,
in slippers and open mouths and pencils and elevators and doors and coats and cars and snow and windows and chocolate and bedsprings and everyday I try to remember something else I can dissect:
some texture, some melody, some pattern, some rhythm
where you might exist too,
but your music
is nowhere else.

we live in big empty houses now,
in hardwood floors and toothpaste-flavored loneliness.
I can still hear our shoeboxes
and feel the pull of our gravity
somewhere
fading ...