morning memory

I can feel your skin through the glass of the window, the glass of a phone screen. You have become everything I feel; all at once an extension of self and a phantom pain, something that is missing but still so close.

Being held in strong arms is a warmth that is impossible to replicate.

All I think is to love you, in the shapeless, formless way of memory; the groaning of the bed as you rise, padding steps fading out into the kitchen, the shuffles and cracks and creaks of your waking. I keep my eyes closed as I remember, each morning, willing your soul close to mine as the audio track in my memory runs out, until I must follow you out to the kitchen to make breakfast alongside your spirit.

I never realized how hard it would be to remember so much of you.