I'm not used to the silence
I don't know that I'll ever get used to that
Sometimes I curse this life for
being the way it is
I am envious of those
whose husbands are only
a work day away
When they've had a horrible day
and can dial his number and talk to him
until they feel better
There are times we go weeks without
knowing if the other is even
alive
those are the bad days
On good days
I get an email from you
and tears well up in my eyes
as I read it
in your voice
and oh, how I miss your voice
I swallow my sadness and put on
a brave face
and tell you that everything
back home is great
I'm doing okay, really
but what I want to say
is that I miss you so much it hurts
and I can't ******* breathe
this distance is too much right now
and I'd beg you to come home
until I am blue in the face
I count the number of times
I get through work without crying
as successes
Each day I am able to make it to my bed at night
or through my front door
or to my car
or even
to the public restroom
before losing it
is a win
But I say none of these things because
they won't do any good
you're still gone for however long and
I am still a mess
but I'm your mess
and when the ocean between us
is drowning me
I will remember that.

We were drinking
and by now I should know
that Jack and Coke
do not mix well with me
you start talking about her
again
I start talking about him
and it's weird but it isn't
because anything feels natural
with you
"I just wish she wasn't my first,"
you'd said
I nod because I know what it is
to feel like that
I tell you about the time
I went to his house
crying like a fool
ending each subsequent sentence with
"I was so stupid"
and I was
I turn to you and say,
"Once you love someone like that,
you never love anyone else like that again."
You nod
and it's quiet for a little while
Thinking back on that conversation now
I meant what I said
I do not love you like I loved him
just as you don't love me
like you loved her
and that's hard to swallow until
you realize
that I love you so much more
than I have ever loved anyone
or anything
so much more
than I even thought
was possible
So no
I don't love you like that
I love you more
than I can comprehend.

and today is one of
those days
where you wake up
to reality snuffing out
the flame of hope
and optimism
you've spent weeks
trying to light

today I am bombarded
with the thought of you
leaving
with the weight of
92 days
hanging over my head
like a rain cloud
today
I am
tired

and I've found that even when
I'm with you
I'm not really with you
because I am always too busy
thinking about you leaving
to enjoy what little time
we get to share together
and I'm sorry for that

I don't know how to apologize
for my feelings
in a way that doesn't ask for
you to say
"you don't need to do that,"
because believe me
I do

I am sorry
that despite my best efforts
I will not be able to be strong
all of the time
or perhaps even
a majority of the time

I am sorry
that I will never get used to
saying goodbye to you
that I can promise you
leaving will never get
any easier

I told you
this would be hard
and I meant that
but I also told you
that there is no one else
in this world
that I would rather do this with
than you
and I meant that
and that is what makes this
so
easy

and I mean that.

Your eyes. I think it started with your eyes. It was unexpected, like most things in this life are, but it was definite. That moment. The back of a warm car on a cold winter day. Your head resting sleepily in my lap and the tired January sun peeking through the fog of afternoon clouds, illuminating that small corner of our universe. My fingers ran through your hair like muscle memory as if I'd been doing that with you every day for years. You tilt your head up to look at me and that's when it was. That's when it happened. I've never fallen in love with someone's eyes before. Having met you makes me wonder if I've ever really fallen in love with anyone else at all. And I haven't written in months, because part of you still feels like a dream. A random phone call waking me up from a nap, an email when we haven't spoken in weeks, a nine hour car ride to be in your arms again. So many things separate us but none of these things matter in the grand scheme of me loving you relentlessly. I've said it before and I will say it again, again and again; it's you. Have you ever loved someone more than you know how to? I swear, it started with your eyes.

It's back
the all too familiar ache
that demands
attention
and necessitates
acknowledgement
yet again
I am reminded
of you

I lied.
A long, long time ago you asked me what my favorite color was. When things were new and clean and easy. Still dancing around in the getting to know you stages. Some days I swear, years later, I am still just getting to know you. But that's besides the point. The point is I lied. You asked me what my favorite color was and I said red. Red is okay, I guess, but red? Plain red, Crayola red, the tin lunchbox your mother bought you for your first day of school red, isn't me.
I always liked blue. Blue anything. Ocean blue, not a cloud in the sky blue, so many clouds in the sky it's almost actually gray blue, the eye color I always wanted blue, favorite shirt blue, toilet bowl cleaner blue, internalized depression blue, art museum walls blue. Blue. I liked blue.
But here I am, saying to you without hesitation that my favorite color is red. And you say that yours is green. You're going on about how our favorite colors are Christmas colors and I am wondering when it was that I decided I needed to be someone other than myself around you.
Many years later, too many years, I am driving down Main Street with a parade of stop lights ahead of me. The colors are doing that thing when my eyes blur them out of focus. Red, green, green, red, red, green. To stop or to go. Part of me is thinking how fascinating it is that we have programmed our brains to subconsciously associate colors with actions and the bigger part of me is thinking about you. And somehow I find this is always the case with everything. As many times as we are next to each other in my line of vision we can never be together. I am talking about the stop lights but I am thinking about us. Green and red can never be on the same stop light at the same time. As soon as I leave, you show up. And it's got me thinking about how we were never really on the same page. How it's taken me this long to realize that no matter how badly either of us may have wanted it, we can never exist together.

Isn't it something? How everything lines up just so. Their car and your car. You never stop to think how miraculous an eight-sided piece of red metal is until it could have turned back the hands of time. We would have stopped. They would have gone straight. no police cars, no ambulances, no fire trucks. No crying mothers and no worried lovers. No blood. No bruises. No nothing. And somehow, this reminds you of him. Somehow, years later, everything still reminds you of him. Loose change or a rainy day or a slow song. The collision of everything. So what. So you are sitting on the side of an unfamiliar country road six feet deep in a cornfield. The windshield is shattered. You don't remember the air bags going off, but they did. Everyone says there are signs. As many sleepless nights you spent trying to go back and find them you always come away empty handed. The officers are asking, at what point did you know you were going to hit their car? you feel your heart tugging at your chest, reminding you of the night you asked him when it was that he fell out of love with you. The officer doesn't understand. Nobody understands. All anyone wants is an answer. As if it's ever that simple. Back to this stop sign. How a handful of seconds could have prevented everything. How a little more love could have saved us. How I loved you until there was nothing left but bones and skin and how it still wasn't enough. How I stretched myself thin and how I still couldn't reach you. I cannot remember the moment of impact. I do not know why you stopped loving me. all I know, is that it happened.