Dead Space

I reach out my hands, desperately clawing at the air in between separated cities, trying to grab a hold of the iron string holding us together. Maybe if I can feel it, touch it, it will feel like you. Maybe I could pull it until you crashed into me. Maybe I’ll have something to hold that reminds me you’re still here.

The key on my neck hanging from a chain unlocks a door, despite what they all may think. It weighs heavily on my chest and burns into my skin as I bury my face in the shirt that isn’t mine. The chain chokes me as I try to sleep in a bed too small and too empty and too cold.

I open my eyes, desperately squinting and searching through the hoards of mannequins around me, trying to catch a glimpse of your light on the other side of the universe. Maybe if I could feel it, some of your endless warmth would land on my skin to thaw my frozen body. Maybe if I could spot it, my world could be illuminated from the fog that surrounds everything without you. Maybe if I could let it blind me, I could no longer see it when they turn away from me to leave me alone in their dust.

The salt coating my cheeks came from my eyes, despite the fact that they won’t see it. The skin on my face cracks as all the youth, all the softness, all the fresh dew drains from my features, leaving only a withered husk of what used to be. My shriveled heart plays a pitiful lullaby that echoes off the walls of my body, like a broken stereo playing meekly within a cavernous underground tunnel.

In the fleeting moments when he isn't sand running through my fingers, when the string finally gives way, the air comes back into my lungs. I inhale my soul back into my heart as the song in my chest crescendos into a symphony, his body feeling like heaven in my arms...

... until the deafening roar of the turbine engine sounds again.

I'm lifted into the air, away from his embrace, back to the blank walls of my room.

The dead space in between, the no man's land that our iron string runs through remains, standing like a dark figure in a doorway, dark and foreboding, draining all the color from my face

I must bite my tongue as my soul is sucked away every time he leaves again, whispering under my breath, telling myself how lucky we are to have found a love so pure and beautifully strong. I will myself to forget the cold miles. The thought hovers over my shoulder as an everpresent, maliciously looming shadow.

Eight hundred and fifty days until the wound is closed for good, and my heart's melody will beat in perfect time with his, without shriveling ever again.