Are You Real?

The hardest part of every single day is right now, when the house goes completely quiet, and I am left sitting here alone with nothing but the thought of you. 

For years, my mind has played the same cruel trick on me. I fall asleep and I see your eyes. Just your eyes, steady and clear, pulling me out of the dark and holding me safe. It’s the only place where the distance doesn't exist. But every single morning, I wake up to the reality that you are not real, I am still waiting for something, and there are eighteen hundred miles of cold, empty highway keeping us apart. 

I don't want to fight the world anymore, and I don't want to be the person who always has to be strong. I am just so incredibly tired of being haunted by a phantom. I am tired of living in a fantasy we started, watching the clock run out while we both hide behind our silence. 

I don't care how reckless it is, and I don't care about looking foolish anymore. I just want the dream to stop being a ghost. 

I want to hear the heavy thud of your boots on my front porch, unannounced and real. I want to open my door and see you standing there, exhausted from the road, taking up the whole frame. I just want you to look down at me and tell me that you're finally done letting the ghosts do the walking. That you're done guarding an empty room, and that you're finally.....

Please stop running from the only thing that matters. Just pack the truck and come home. 

Are you real? or did I just wake from another dream.?