up

You warm the bed with your life, and I travel slowly over a heavy-eyed path to awakening. The television is the first thing I hear. Too loud for morning voices talking nonsense about suicides and 90 pounds gone. It's softer in the bed, and your voice remains quiet. My mind travels towards clear--a slow journey it doesn't look forward to, and i don't blame it, i also fight reality. The air conditioner, set below freezing, gives the room that sea foam chill that you like, a chill that pushes us closer together in a bed that a thousand have slept in before us, a thousand sleepy heads detesting rational thought. I pull the covers over my shoulder and roll in your direction. The turn somehow shaking and dispelling the night. Here is where I usually sit up and study you,push your hair back and make sure you're still mine, but not today, and not since last week or a hundred tomorrows, because you're gone, and your not coming back. I'm up now, and the clarity of my loss and your death is back on the menu.