terror seizes me from the chest.

"I am going to be passing through Milwaukee this weekend and then also during the beginning of the first week in September. I hear you are busy but I will give you a call. I'd like to get together and talk some things through. I hope that you and the kid are well."

these are all the words that he could conjure up after months of absence. of waiting, longing for the presence of what i came to understand as my "other half," whatever that is meaning to folks these days. 8 months since christmas, almost nine. looking daily at unfamiliar objects and longing for breakfast in bed. (coffee, or tea?)

neither, apparently.

feeling as if though i've been better than fair, better than good. giving opportunities for the door to be shut quietly and mess-lessly. anything but the dissolving of my heart, and my hopes.

IF, he once said. about coming back. somewhere, i must have filed that away in my mind, knowing how serious it can be to fall in love with a concept. an idea. a promise. (how does "the rest of our lives" sound as a concept/idea/promise?) IF i can come back to my senses, what am i to make of all this non-sense?

a photograph of him hugging his father on the bookshelf, connecting in tears with his family over his absence and the misery those promises brought me. what was i thinking? what am i still thinking?

there's a thing inside of me that hates myself because i can't help it- i know i love him. there's a thing inside of me that thinks, he'll come home eventually, and you'll get everything worked out. but there's another part of me that knows better. (it doesn't make me wish i were any less wrong.)

i've survived one more lunar eclipse. i can't look the moon in the face anymore without seeing his eyes laughing back at me.

"where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell."
edna st. vincent millay