I wake up in the morning to the sound of wind in trees,
to birds making their way across the still-dark sky
with a gentle, numbing weight
that flutters across my chest,
pressing on my ribs like fingertips to a bruise,
drawing lines across the indents in my skin
the way you used to, as if to memorize the soft places of me.
so tenderly. All the memories still warm,
wrapped in the blankets, caught
so beautifully, with the rise and fall of my chest,
bones stretching, yearning to dance
and my head filled with dizzy morning dreams.
so sweetly, for all the untouched places, for all the lips
so passionately, not for where I once was, not for the arms
that wrapped themselves around my body like a cage,
the arms and legs and sheets and dreams
not yet intertwined with my own.
for all that I don’t yet know I’m missing
but still taste the absence
metallic and raw on my tongue.