To say that I miss you is akin to referring to a hurricane as a ‘slight breeze’, an earthquake ‘a mere shudder’, a tsunami ‘a bit of a splash’.

Your absence has rendered my insides hollowed out.  As though my organs have been ripped from my core by vicious hands.  My lungs are squeezed in a vice, and I can barely draw air.

How is it possible that a heart so tormented continues to beat?  That this life force persists on pounding through these crumbling veins?  There is not a cell in my body that does not scream in denial of your leaving.

I claw the air – in the vain hope of capturing your essence.  Your scent.  Your spirit.  Or ripping out the eyes of Fate.

I crave the weight of your body on mine.  Your arm across my shoulder.  Your head in my lap.  And I die, piece by tiny piece.  As the knowledge of your irreversible departure seeps into my brain.  Like acid.  Burning this unacceptable truth into a soul that has no power to extinguish the pain. 

Your absence has become this ugly monstrous thing that sits in the room with me.  Mocking me.  I begin to whisper, begging you to return.  For surely this cannot be true?  Then later, gently pleading for my own sweet demise, so that I too can be absent with you.  But the monster simply roars with thunderous laughter.

© Michele Harrod October, 2010