sunrise

The sky is pink,
fading to blue as the slowly rising sun
illuminates winter clouds that hang,
stationary over the city.

Slow jazz floats through the air,
hanging with a smooth viscosity
that reminds me, oddly, of you.

You, drunk, slow,
sitting with your legs swung over the arms of that
awful
arm chair,
your silly smile slowly stretching into a smirk that would make the Cheshire
proud
as I tip the whiskey bottle again
and take a long drink.

And we stayed like that,
sipping whiskey straight from the bottle,
watching the sky change until the dark was gone
and I could sleep.

"Sometimes its as if the heart is torn from the chest"

the heart swells
it bursts
it bleeds


until the blood is gone


and still 


it aches
it needs


until 
all that remains is darkness
abyss, void-- that escapes definition


where once you were, smiling, warm, 
where once you were, real, whole


where once skin 
would flush and lungs would 
gasp and lips would 
tremble at touch, no, thought--


the memory does not fade,
drifting away with time as some, ignorant of love, suggest
the pain does not dull into a slow constant throb, 
no, 
it is a constant stream of electricity that surges 
-with even the most minor of mental whisperings- 
of your presence. 


and yet
each day comes
again, with the sun
and goes, 
again, in the dark


and the sirens sound, 
loud 
racing off to another's pain


and the world- 


oh the world didn't stop just for us, no, 
only my world.


and each day brings the swelling, the bursting and bleeding and the constant electrifying
and each night, too, a new surge, stronger than each preceding, 
because this mind will not permit
will not permit the memory to fade.
no. 


because every moment of love, 
every flush 
and gasp 
and moment 
where trembling hands reached out to find you in the dark


was worth this lifetime of struggle 
to balance survival against the truth of losing you.