just bring me some rain because I'm dying.*

Now, she just stares at me and shakes her head if I ask if it's okay. It's getting harder everytime, and even if she smiles in the end, I know she's right that it is not okay. The sad truth that I have to leave every time I come home, is digging deeper and deeper, oftentimes catching and dragging across my figurative flesh like a barbed hook. When it's hours before I leave and we both know it, I shift my eyes somewhere when she looks at me. But I can only embrace her and feel her frame embrace me back with what love she can muster. Inwardly, I am screaming.

I cannot let her see me crying, I feel that perhaps it wouldn't do any good; just create more sadness in my absence.

Then days after, I know she'll be looking for me, asking where I am even if she knows where; like a heartbreaking sort of an exercise but not exactly to the point of futility, some kind of assurance that there are still answers to her questions and I don't want to think about the time when the answers can't contain that assurance anymore.

And I'll call her in a little while, perhaps after I wake up just to hear her say my name, just to hear her laugh and to hear her tell me about her day or about what happened to her yesterday; then there will be that silence again after she had told me all her little stories, and when she hesitates to ask me to tell my own little stories. I can hear her on the other end, even after she had stopped speaking. At this point, I will be wishing to the point of hallucination that I can embrace her; feel her embrace me even for just a minute of uninterrupted bliss. Then after the call, I will space out and float away, not wanting to feel anything for some spell then come back to this one thought:

I miss you.








* A. Duritz - title taken from a line of "Children in Bloom"