Sleeping In

(Also posted at IndieInk, July 2011.)


I lingered in bed this morning because of the holiday. I reflexively reached my hand across to the other side, forgetting that you're not there anymore. Remember all the hours we spent here? Do you think about it at all? For me, on days like this, it's like you never left. Your ghost lingers -- the ghost of us lingers. It haunts me.

I was never entirely sure that I loved you until the day you left. I suspected, but I was never certain until that instant. Maybe it's because I only really love things that are too broken to salvage, like the furniture I insist on rescuing from my neighbors' trash or the ratty old sweater that my mom wore when I was a kid. I see the most beauty in the imperfections and the history that they represent. And so, only when I had a complete historical narrative of our past and present and future could I see that it was, indeed, love.

It's more than that, though: I only knew that I loved you when I knew that it would never be. I only love the unattainable, the mysterious, the forbidden. I don't like realities -- the Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays, the rote, the routine, the mundane. I like the Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays, the late nights and late mornings and the lazy afternoons, the departure from the norm and the potential for the unexpected. And so, I love the holidays. I just loved them a little bit more when you were here too.