I removed your name from my phone’s dictionary

Having grown too tired of it trying to bring you back

Auto-correcting you into sentences meant for other people

Reminding me that you still exist outside of this life. 

I would type “tomorrow” and you would appear

An electronic representation of both presence and absence

Contradictory states of existence forcefully inserted

Behind hopes and dreams for a new day.

Now you are gone

With your weightless well wishes floating with you

Trailing shadows as you pass over

Ascending into an alternate space. 

The impressions on my mind

Are the lack of impressions in my bed

Feelings neither lonely nor ecstatic

And in the evening hours

I roll over

Longing to find your touch

To breathe “I love you” on your neck

While tracing vows on your shoulders

And memories down your back

To pull you to the warmth in my chest

Vessel lit by more than pleasant chance

Then filled with song and silence

To print your name on my lips

With overuse in laughter

And the quiet need to share my soul

To read my own, on your eyelids

Fading, projecting some shadow of myself

Between the shades of dusk and dawn

To waken to you unvanished

Returned from self-inflicted exile

And thoughts of worthlessness

Yet all are whispers and whimpers

Pathetic musings in the midnight hour

Scraping by on the way to rest.

While wilting in crimson melancholy

Weeping petals as morning rain

Or tears that pool in midnight mourning

Turn over a new leaf

With the gentle nudge of spring,

Stretch out of winter’s shade.