I missed you today.
With a suddenness, a bereft slap across my skin.
When that familiar hair ahead of me on the sidewalk
turned.
And it wasn't you.
I missed you in the hollow of the moment of the stranger who wasn't you.
And with resounding howl
Like a grieving mother
I missed you.
I remember in the sheets we'd tangle,
I smelled them. I smelled summer air and my perfume
I smelled  your soap and your musk in that minute second on the street.
I stopped and I breathed in deep. Inhale, Inhale.
Before you turned and it was not you.
Like a sailor's wife on the shore
I watched as the stranger who wasn't you turned back down the street
Growing smaller and smaller in the distance.
And a thousand piercing stinging blinding pins of light forced themselves.
They stabbed at me and took my breath.
Took your scent and the bed we lay.
On the street, on the street
as you walked away, the stranger.
Paralyzing me with your nearness only to be someone so very much not you.
I missed you and i stood in the street and gravity gave up its pull to laugh at my foolishness
and my eyes filled with tears to celebrate their perfect deception.
and my bones forgot how to hold on for dear life
and I slid to the ground
to the ground
because
I saw you today on the street. The stranger that wasn't you.
I have learned the art of hiccuping you inside.
Memory, hiccup. There you are now tucked away inside.
Kisses on the soft hairs at the nape. Hiccup that away too.
And all of the hiccups came out in a swallow of your name...
A hundred swallows, truth.
They flew wickedly around my head  gleeful in my faux pas.
And ten hungry vultures came to take the remains of my hope.
Pick away greedily at my anticipation.
Satiated on the last of my blind faith and now they are too fat to fly.
And I am too weak to run.
Because I saw you on the street today,
The stranger that wasn't you. My beloved. My adored.
Such a peculiar street.
I will not pass this way again.
sahn
04/09/2014