Your car turns the corner and flees my gaze
As I wipe the streams of agony from my face
Dreading the miles that disconnect our bodies
And leave our hearts to face the withdrawal
The waves of pain that split cracks through my soul
The pain of waking up to an empty bed
The pain of reaching for a hand that’s no longer there
Of clinging to my phone to await the ping of your next sonnet and the ring that calls me to your voice
Of longing that has surrounded my heart with iron bars of loneliness
Of the circumstantial separation that bursts my mind into roaring flames
But I still await the next time you pull into my driveway
I still smile as I count the days until I run into your arms once again
I acknowledge that this tormenting cycle will someday end
And we’ll no longer have to endure another painfully long goodbye.

She contemplated waking up before the rain
In the hopes of feeling something--
Something other than dreary dreadful dread.
Maybe that sounds childish
And maybe, just maybe, that's okay.

I'm dreading.

To pack everything,
from the place we used to call ours.

The empty boxes are staring back at me.

I can't bring myself to fill them.

I'm scanning the apartment that used to be ours..

I'm seeing our history repeating itself.

I somehow see your shadow from the kitchen,
and mine from the living room.

I hear your laughter when you mess up cooking..

And suddenly you're everywhere, and I'm paralyzed.

I can't move you into boxes, and I can't leave you.

Yet I need to leave you within this walls..

When I would visit Ohio, my grandma always said
certain things in Spanish, as to not flood my head.

I wish I understood that secret life she led
by interpreting her knowledge, I know to have been well read,

But now my striving hunger will never be quite fed,
for now those precious, foreign words are unforgivingly dead.

Oh, how I cry very often, at night while I’m in bed.
Regrets like these don’t go away, so I try to cope instead.

I’ll never forget her loving Spanish ***** (that memory’s never fled),
even though my nostalgic heart regretfully succumbs to dread.

dread reaches both hands into my throat
to take the air from my very lungs
my breath comes shorter and shorter and i fear for my life
i lay awake, wondering when my death will arrive
how soon
how soon
how soon