I could sleep now in this raft of a bed, or later, or eat an unreasonable dinner, or make something sensible, or wait, getting lost in a book, or a thought, or these small rooms, quieter in your abscence. Another city night, some man sings loudly into the velvety dusk, and it’s not clear whether the high rises are cast in cool blue hues due to this sky or to their glass or if such […]
“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air” sonnet XCIV, Pablo Neruda
At work, tragedy rooms– To favor a side is not the same as being wrong. These families, they furnish the place with love and grief– any place can be a home, except alone. Tonight the city lights don’t remind me of anything. Sometimes it’s as if this heater isn’t even on.
Funny how an absence can feel so weighty. Of course I still breathe, but the air is rarer, and I turn a little blue from time to time. Is there a word for the echo of an embrace? I swear, I can still feel it in my arms on nights like these, starless and wakeful, resting like a chill for as long as I can keep it.
OPTIONAL POETRY 