We

I exist in the space near me and the space near you, only. The moon carried himself with the power of a lighthouse, wisdom guiding late birds to empty nests and empty hearts to the arms of carefully placed lovers. I caught him watching me. Though; perhaps it had been the wine in my head creating stories. 

I poured glass after glass, bubbling heroics brimming the rims with stories, until after a while I could see you;- fitted suit with an air of grace, intelligent feet that moved with the ease of a stream, and blue eyes that had entire fires behind each pupil. I remembered it taking my breath away and once again, I had empty lungs accompanied by a full heart. 

I shook my head and you disappeared. I lifted the cup to my lips once more, either to make me remember or forget even more vividly, I couldn’t stand the empty grey place of between. I remembered the daisies that used to litter my front door because you knew they were my favorite, I remembered how we screamed at each other with the newness of love but the precedent of fear, I remembered how I would rotate every ocean on this planet for a few more minutes getting to explain to you how completely wrong it is for us to be apart. 

I knew God had stopped listening a long time ago. ‘Drunken cries don’t carry messages to heaven’, I’d repeat, though sometimes I would still wish my hardest that they would. I carried my glass across the hardwood floors that echoed with my abandoned steps in the ways they used to echo with ours together. The glass dropped from beneath my pressing fingers and shattered into the ground. I looked up at your picture, finely printed eulogy underneath your radiance, I wept with a power I hadn’t felt in months. 

You weren’t easy to find, I thought; existing in this world froze me. Day and day after, I only felt a desolate chime, nothing more or less. I knew I needed you, but I didn’t know you then, I hardly know you now. As I shook the wine from my vision I felt my eyes fill once more with the empty weight of liquid promises never kept. 

You were hard to see at first. But seeing you was all that mattered. I looked near the balcony, gaining strength to shut the twin oak doors, and at first it was only your eyes. Their fire burned into my own vision and I blinked, hard. The fitted suit outlined my memory, but when I looked, it was only a faded shirt and cloth pants. I shook my head. This isnt real this isnt real this isnt REAL- the last words turned to shouting and I felt my body trembling with the weight of my own grief. 

“You exist in the space near me and the space near you, only. “ your voice echoed through my mind and I felt my heart thawing and shattering, being rebuilt with your presence and being destroyed by the memory of your absence. I dared to try a response, but my tongue felt heavy and lost, trying to speak a language it had never heard prior. 

“There is no you anymore; and there is no me because of it.” I could feel my voice breaking and blending with the chill of the room. 

“I still exist because of you. You are the only life I remember; I watch your eyes still when you smile, I hold you while you sleep, you exist because it is what you do best. You have kept me existing because of it.”

I turned sharply; out of confused hurt and shame for indulging in whatever this was becoming. Suddenly I felt warm arms wrapping me, until we were intertwined and shining. I looked into his eyes and felt the happiness that had been desolate months finally break through my own eyes and entrap us together, in this moment. 

“There is no reason to ever cry, we are as we are- we existed once together and we will exist once again. There is no me without you.” 

You were my most prominent thought waking up the next morning. I could feel the emptiness returning to my bones like soldiers of a lost war, and it was all  I could do to continue to breathe with your newly acquired absence sifting over me once again. I hadn’t remembered returning to my bed the night before, only the breaking glass and terribly true dream I had. I pushed my body to wake up fully, to clean the glass and attempt another day. I was in the same place as last night. My once broken glass set upright and whole beneath his picture. I ran my fingers down its edges, half expecting it to shatter once more. I walked over to the balcony doors, still opened and inviting in the chill of midmorning air. I froze. Daisies littered my balcony, leaving empty only a small space near where you had stood the night before, replaced with a note. My hands shook with the power of a storm, it took me three attempts to open the letter. 

“You are the sun, I am the moon. I reflect the beauty you offer me. While we exist in opposite fragments of this life, break your sorrows. Soon we will breathe life into each other, once again. 

I exist in the space near me and the space near you, forever. “