For a long time now, when I’d be eating my cornflakes at the breakfast table,
I’d keep thinking you were coming up behind me,
those Aha! sneak attacks, waited for them every morning,
how you’d suddenly wrap your arms around me.
And I’ve closed my eyes in anticipation, spoon to my lips,
of your hands, warm and smooth,
caressing my chest in slow circles as you hold me tight.
I’ve waited, and waited, finally opened my eyes
when it didn’t happen, and as if I were going blind,
I’ve looked behind me and barely seen you,
growing smaller and smaller,
running to the lower and lower line on the eye chart,
as if you were headed farther and farther back,
moving in the wrong direction.
It must be some kind of muscle memory,
this continuing sensation,
like the way when a limb is lost, you keep thinking the person is still there,
the arm or leg feeling as if it is still attached to her.
Or is it me?
That’s the way I miss you, from then to somewhere beyond now,
I fear, a conflation of you and amputation
which goes on and on, as if I’m soon to have
a reattachment, or a resurrection, or a transplant,
to wipe my eyes and blink
for something that’s no longer there.
Lanning Lee 