I am afraid that if I dare speak to you again there will no more be any words to say.
If we were to speak in another language and find a way to express this void,
Our hearts would explode from its sheer, bleach-stark truth.

There are not even any left to mean ‘I love you,’
but ‘I’ and ‘miss’ and ‘you,’
Promptly engraved on your organs by that gaping hole in your stomach,
The lingering taste of skin on your lips,
The thin sheet of sweat in your nostrils,
The disappearing bite marks along the curvature of your spine.

(The more distance sound has to cover, the less likely it will reach its destination.
There are no Grand Canyons in the Pacific Ocean, and words do not reverberate across clear skies.)

Every night, ‘You’ and ‘Miss’ and ‘Me’ form tentative droplets of water
They make their way down my neck,
Rest on the nest of my clavicle,
and stay there, stagnant, until morning.
(You were always a body of water to me.)

My stomach is gradually healing itself.
The stitches formed by the words
“Might’ and ‘Not’ and ‘Feel’ and ‘(the) Same’ are the most painful.