i miss you in the strange way
people miss places they’ve never been,
like standing on the edge of the shoreline
and aching for the other side.
you have never slept beside me.
i have never learned the shape of your hand
by reaching for it in the dark.
my mouth has never found yours,
yet somehow
my heart returns to you
like it remembers a home
my body has never seen.
it feels impossible,
this grief for an absence
that was never present.
but what else should i call it?
when something inside me
leans towards you constantly,
when every beautiful thing
arrives in your shadow.
when i hear a song and think,
there,
that is where you live.
what else is it,
but missing?
i miss the weight of your head on my shoulder.
i miss conversations we haven’t had yet.
i miss mornings that do not belong to us,
soft afternoons,
and shared silences.
the ordinary miracle
of existing in the same room.
the world insists yearning requires memory.
i don’t believe it.
sometimes longing is born from recognition.
sometimes you meet a soul,
before you meet a body.
and somehow,
without ever having held you,
i know exactly what i am waiting for.
so i carry you,
not as a wound,
but as a horizon.
far away.
untouched.
yet present in every direction i turn.
