It used to be that I heard certain songs and a sweet pang of memory would spring through my body, uncoil between my legs, hold my hands like grace, and I would unconsciously close my eyes, breathing in what it was like to be there with him, the depth and width of us. The liquid vowels of his voice, the way he said my name, as if it were a word made of quicksilver instead of a single clumsy syllable, drenched in adoration the same way he could pull me out of my body by sliding his fingers through the roots of my hair.
It seems now that I can’t relate, that I’ve drifted too far away. All I’ve got left is a cavity where all that used to be, hollowed out enough I can shout into it and not even hear a replied echo. Where did those mellow afternoons go? Those fantastic grins? Does this happen to everybody? I look up the names of the chemicals responsible for love and wonder if I’ve just been running out. Somewhere I have a photo of myself that I’ve never looked at, sitting alone in his bed, destroyed, taken the same day I left a line of poetry in lipstick on his mirror, the same one I wrote on his skin in ink the day he left me, the only evidence I could bear to leave, even though I knew he would wash it away.