Here you are now, a sudden and important fixture in my life. Wasn’t it just yesterday, when I had no clue how the smile on your face began or where it ended? And tomorrow, it wouldn’t matter if the smile were no longer there. It wouldn’t matter that you were no longer there. 

For now, it’s the surface of your eyes and the truth under your skin that I want to feel the most. It’s the stain of your nails and the brightness of your teeth that I want to take home with me. It’s the songs you paint and the dreams you write that I want to pack beneath my pillow. It’s the ‘me’ you conjure up from the images of ‘you’ I’ve never seen but wish to breathe life into.

Yesterday life was full and complete without you. Even the beast couldn’t get his foot inside the door if he tried. But today the light from your voice filters through all of the lifetimes I’ve lived.

Tomorrow you’ll be gone taking with you everything I’ve imagined about you and me, including the sand between our toes as we chase tiny crabs along the shore. Tomorrow I’ll put you away for someone else and life will probably be whole once again.

But for now, I feel you creating a void inside so hollow and beautiful that it makes me ache and smile all at once.

Note: This one is really old… at least a decade old. It was first posted on my old blog, under a different pseudonym. Seems like another lifetime now :-)