When a person loses a limb,
they often feel it.
A phantom ache.
The limb is gone,
yet the nerves continue searching
for something they can no longer touch,
grieving a part of themselves
that no longer exists.
Ever since we’ve been apart,
I’ve realized
the heart knows how to do
exactly the same thing.
Even though you’ve never lived
inside my walls,
every time I walk down my halls
I feel it.
Something missing.
The outline of a person still lingering.
A shadow cast by someone
who should be beside me
but isn’t.
I have become homesick
for a life I barely knew.
Homesick for mornings
that only existed a handful of times.
For your voice.
For your laugh.
For the quiet that somehow never felt empty
when it belonged to both of us.
I fell in love with it
the way the tide falls in love with the shore—
effortlessly,
instinctively,
as though neither one ever knew any other way.
Sometimes I wonder if it happened at all.
Or if it was only one beautiful dream
buried somewhere beneath
my many nightmares.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Tight.
Because some desperate part of me still believes
that if I hold them closed long enough,
I’ll open them
and you’ll be back in your chair.
The same chair I’d climb into
until I disappeared into your lap,
my face buried against your neck,
breathing you in
as though my lungs had been
holding their breath for years.
The same place where I’d pull your face to mine.
Feel your lips.
Slowly trace your cheekbone with my thumb.
Memorizing every part of the man
I was already beginning to call
home.
It was too easy.
Too easy to simply exist beside you.
Too easy to forget
where I ended
and you began.
And maybe that’s why it hurt so much
to look away.
Because somewhere in the back of my mind
I already knew
every glance had an expiration date.
Every smile.
Every touch.
Every precious moment I wanted to pull apart
with trembling hands
just to make it last
a little longer.
I know this isn’t goodbye forever.
I know it’s only for now.
But the tears tracing quiet paths down my face
can’t tell the difference.
My heart,
panicking beneath my ribs
as it reaches for you like a phantom limb,
can’t tell the difference.
My body,
which learned so effortlessly how to fit against yours,
still reaches for you in the early morning
and closes its hands around
nothing
but the cold air
between us.
And until I can find my way back to you…
I suppose this is what it means
to live with a phantom ache.
To live with the breath stolen from my lungs.
To feel someone in places they have never been.
To survive on memories
that refuse to stop feeling like home.
Until that moment comes,
I will have to learn how to live
with a heart that beats
in chronic ache
and monochrome.