The Blow

Sitting on my bed, eating leftover birthday cake, it hits me again with a vengeance that you're gone.   I don't cry at the drop of a hat anymore, and I can picture your face with a smile rather than a tear.  But sometimes, when I least expect it, something will happen to remind me that you're not here.  That your ring will never sound from my phone again, that I'll never get one of the hugs that proves you love me, even when you don't say it.  That I'll never run my fingers through your hair, or have you sigh with derision and resignation when I'm telling you something you know is right but you don't want to listen to.And it gets hard to breathe, like someone is holding my heart and I don't know if they'll let it go.

   I needed you the other day.  Someone I thought could potentially be somebody turned out to be a somebody for a friend of mine, and left me feeling alone and cold.  You always could make me feel loved and warm, even though you were hundreds of miles away.  You could pull me away from the doom and gloom and make me feel as though I was amazing and he was an idiot for even thinking about leaving me behind, even though you did a million times.  The difference is you never really left me behind.  You always came back.  And now you won't.  I'm not mad anymore.  It's been replaced with a constant grief.  Not overwhelming, but there nonetheless.  I ride out the waves, knowing that sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's bad, but it's always there.  And even though you're gone, you're still here, in the brightness of the moon, in the flash of car wheels, in the stupid songs I hear on the radio. I just wish you were really here.  Because I miss you so.