When You Go

The garage door wakes me. You’ve gone for the day, drove right out of our home and into a world of strangers. No goodbye. You thought you were being kind.

The bed is cold. The room is cold. I’m certain if I look closely, I could see my breath. The heat from the rising sun makes these old wooden joists pop, but I’m still cold. You’ve left me here to freeze.

I get up. I wrap myself in a throw, the one on your side of the sofa. It smells like you, fresh from the shower. I remember you, here, just hours before. How we talked and laughed and kissed.

I work. I try to create, but my usual flood of ideas is an ice floe inching downstream, so I resign to the mundane. Dishes. Laundry. Shower scum. The television drones on in the background, constant, like falling snow. I think I can’t go on another second, not like this, not with the frost creeping in closer and closer, and then I hear the garage door again. I’m suddenly so full of life and love and warmth that I forget how cold I’d been.

Why must you take my sun with you when you go?

– sld