I brush your brown hair
Away from your lightly-closed eyes,
Place a kiss on your tender forehead
And shoulder my bag,
Heavy with responsibility.

How I wish I still lay beside you,
Curled up in your arms
With your prickly chin on my shoulder.
But the sky is bright
And I know
I must leave and 'seize the day'.

The slow rise of your chest haunts me, dear,
While I brace myself for the end of the world.
No rumbling car or ringing phone
Could drown out your sleeping sighs.

I must go -- I must go!
Tear myself away from our cosy nest.
But slumber on, my dearest one,
For when you wake, I will adore you.

so when I look from zenith to horizon I can no longer tell whether I am myself or I am Leah-wife-of-Jacob, who maybe cried the same tears I did when she realised he would never love her. I could almost drown in all the insignificant pain of others before me who loved a significant her to no end or, avail.
Because it was me who was recalled to life on a single note of your voice which time has boldened to singularity. And it was you who said the best people get lost along the way with your back reflecting this half of the room. And yet
Anxieties flickering to embers; awakened.
Video tapes filed away; unpacked.
If I could not cry I would not, even when you shook my cynical bones to turbulence and life with the reminder that you are ephemeral and so am I. How should I pretend to live knowing that when I lose you this time it will not be to self-control, but to forces of something as calculated as time.