darling, I can still chart the precise geometry of your nose,
count the number of freckles underneath your thin green eyes,
delineate the lifecycle of the stubble on your cheeks,
and all I want is to come back home to you...

aren't you going to miss
the way I could slip your belt out from under you
with my eyes still swimming in yours
while you lay down, hot and panting in the dark?

who will caress your naked chest as tenderly as I have,
slide her hand up your shirt the way that makes you shiver
and kiss you everywhere like gentle rainfall,
warm and soft and fervent like poetry?

who will bandage the fall wounds
on your torn up knees and elbows
and wash your 22-year-old body like a baby in the bathtub
when you're so drunk and tired you cannot stand?

who will stroke your hair as you sleep with one leg bent in her bed and
scratch the back of your neck and
hold you close to calm your racing heartbeat and
remember the pills you take at night and where you keep your contact lenses and all your family stories and buy you Tylenol and your favorite Gatorade when you're sick and never,
ever,
ever leave
you the way that
I did
?

that morning, I was woken up by the beating of your chest
against mine.
it was faster and that meant you were awake,
my love, my darling,
you were
awake and thinking and moving again,
no longer just your soft, comfortable, sleeping body,
and I cried in your arms because I knew that
it was time to leave home.