before :: after

and you

being in the same room, and having been for hours, us not side by side but under that one roof,

i watch you, it's 7 in the morning,
you
hunched over buttoning your green suit jacket, then reaching for your pullover coat,

trying not to wake anyone else with its wrinkling...

i follow your vertebrae, you are so thin that they protrude and are noticeable through your shirt,

and i've never felt so separate from you.

the overwhelming sense of our isolation and apartness rose up from the ground,

i had to turn my head away
because i felt like an intruder.

it isn't fear that you will leave,
or fear that, once having had you, you've since gone,

but

fear, rather, that you were never here to begin with.