longing

You’re on my mind a lot more these days. I am surrounded by all these new sights, sounds and smells but the old words still slip into the creases of my heart. Once you start pretending it’s hard to stop. Once you start believing it’s hard to let go and say stop.

You might remember the clock by my bed that beeps every hour. It doesn’t tell me what time it is and I don’t really care but one soft beep tells me that another hour has past in some sleepless corridor. The thoughts that fill the spaces, fill the minutes until the next beep, are enormous. Like that I can honestly say that I never really thought I’d be going through all this so alone. You know the lonely that you only feel in a room full of people where none belong to you and you belong to none. It’s not unhappy, it’s not sad, it’s just is what it is – a fact of my life.

My special clock also simulates the sound of the ocean and wind and crickets in the push of a button. None of these mask the sound of sleeplessness. But there were those nights, eased into the folds of a shoulder, hand resting on the hollow place just below the bone, skin against skin, arms wrapped around a body when sleep was laid so easily. That’s when my mind is quiet.

I am longing for the quiet. I am longing for you.