like when I can’t sleep and I miss you so I reach over to touch your sleeping body and you turn away so I try not to be sad but I can’t help it so I curl my chest against your back and hold you for a while but my shoulder’s slipping out so I give up and lie on my back alone for a while and then I get up again and pee and look at my face in the mirror and then I lie back down and close my eyes and try to stop to sleep to sleep but I’m thinking so I give up and touch you again and this time you roll over and hold my hand but it always makes my fingers hurt so I try to put your hand on my thigh but you don’t want me and I try not to be sad but I can’t help it so I try to remember that I’m so happy sometimes and that I laugh sometimes and I hear my laugh and I hear your laugh and I hear your snores and remember that once when I touched your chest at night you hummed as if pleased by me and I want to please you and I want you to need me I want you to want me all the time I get up again and look at my face in the mirror and look at my naked body and hear the years both behind us and ahead of us that call out and tomorrow when I wake up you’re looking at me and I start thinking again I start my engine again I start myself again and you wait for me to touch you you’re always waiting for me but I’ve been waiting on you for years and I’m tired all the time but I’m thinking all the time and I’m listening all the time for the little sounds you make that tell me it’s ok to touch you to love you but in the absence in the silence I just bounce my knees and tap my fingers and scratch and twitch and wait, like when someone stands at the edge of a cliff and closes their eyes and dares the wind to carry them, like when I’m kneeling and you’re standing and I hug your middle and look up to beg for a kiss

 

your colors drain

chlorophyll out of my veins

the wider your margins are

the further my roots stray