This one is dark

I'm doing much better than this poem would lead you to believe. It's a mark of my healing that I'm even able to articulate these feelings. Still, it's not a happy poem.

A Spell for Survival

The sun will rise tomorrow morning, despite your best efforts

You know this as you lay awake in a cold and empty bed

Watching the neon lines on the clock mock you

3:33

Witching hour.

The house moans and it’s not so much the sounds that are unfamiliar

But the silence

The absence of another person breathing

The bed is so cold.

You’ve run through your meditation exercises three times though

You never thought about how easily sleep came

When you slept next to him.

You miss it, the way you miss the ease of breathing when you have a cold.

The darkness isn’t getting lighter (not yet, at any rate)

And the bed is so cold

But your eyes are growing accustomed to the dark

The same way your heart grows accustomed to feeling like there’s a gaping hole inside of it.

Your thoughts happen faster than you think they do in the daytime

Oh god I’m so lonely

The bed is so cold without him

And the distance between you and him seems farther even then a continent

This poem should end with the sweet relief of sleep

Or the fiery declaration of independent, fiery enough to warm your bed without him

Or the hopeful tune of birdsong

On this night none of these things spare you the dark long night

But the sun comes up, despite your best effort.