Leaning

One of the things I miss without you is a kind of attuning.

Before, even though we were far away, 

you were attuned to me.

I felt your presence throughout the day, 

not just in the small messages I'd receive as the day progressed 

("Hope your day is the greatest!") 

but something else, 

a feeling of knowing you were there behind me, 

the way you walked up that night 

after we drank wine in that field under the tiki torch – 

I knew you were there, 

felt you on the wind long before you materialized to put your hand in mine.

Losing you has been tangible to me, 

though you may pretend there is no loss, 

that this now is no different from that then, 

because I know the difference between now

and the way you used to bend your thought toward me 

even when we did not speak, 

even as we both existed in our separate busynesses of the day.

I miss the way you could talk to someone else in a crowd 

while all your energy was directed, palpably, toward me.

It is this feeling of loss that makes me the saddest. 

I sense not that you are gone, but that I am gone for you, 

that you do not lean toward me across the distance

the way you used to.

So: mourning for you, for loss, for myself, all of the above. I do. 

And I am awash with self-pity. Why not? And 

I am not speaking, either, about love, although falling for you was a true pleasure. 

I mean, instead, to speak around something I have 

never been able to articulate when it comes to you 

and your presence in my life. Call it magic or spirituality – 

the physical sensation of connecting as we did. 

And now I must relearn that connection as something other 

than I thought it was, As something 

more subject to the space between us 

than I had imagined it before.

—This is from 29 August 2011