There are days when I know that I had more to say to you, in the end.
I lay in bed at night and hear the silence whisper my name in your voice.
I try to tell myself that I am alright. Maybe this is just how it has to be, this is what I might deserve. I keep the pain of that safe in my body knowing I will never get to experience the rest of us.
Most nights are like this. I stay up longer than I should remembering us because no one else will.
On the nights where I miss you too much to bear, I turn over and look at you, a frozen image from the last day I saw you. I think you’ll always stay this way to me.
“Isn’t it strange?” I ask. You trace your hand along my face and push away a strand of my hair.
“What’s strange, my love?” you smile at me. It’s so warm, that smile.
“We have these conversations every night, and after it’s always the same. You are gone, and I am here missing you.” I can’t look at you now, I don’t dare reach out to touch you either.
Why did you go away? I beg to ask, but I know you won’t answer that.
Why wasn’t I enough for you to stay? I start to cry silently. My nightly ritual.
The truth is you rarely answer me. I talk, I ask, I cry. You lay there next to me and watch me fall asleep holding onto the pieces of you I have left.
“Do you think we’d still be in love if you stayed?” I dare to speak again.
“Wouldn’t that be nice, my love?”
“Was any of it real?”
“Wasn’t it?” you say.
These are the nights I realize there was nothing else I could’ve said, in the end. I stare at your beautiful face, try to find the real you in those blue eyes. I never told you this, but it is the last thing I hold onto as I fall asleep.
Another night of talking with your ghost.
A Series of Observations 