Consumed

I am consumed by the thought of you,

as though my mind were made for nothing else.

My eyes are hungry for the sight of you,

my hands desperate for the touch of you,

and every hour spent without you

feels longer than it has any right to be.

You are my first thought upon waking

and my last surrender before sleep,

and God knows I have tried

to find some quiet place between the two

where you do not exist.

There is none.

You have found your way into everything.

Into the silence of empty rooms,

into songs I never cared to hear before,

into the turn of a stranger’s head

that, for one foolish second,

I mistake for yours.

I look for you without meaning to.

In crowds.

Through windows.

Across rooms I know you will never enter.

Even absence has learned your shape.

I have wanted things before you.

I have mistaken longing for love,

desire for devotion,

loneliness for need.

Then there was you.

And suddenly every lesser feeling

showed itself for what it was.

Because I do not merely miss you.

I ache for you.

There is something almost cruel

in knowing that you exist somewhere

beyond the reach of my hands,

breathing beneath the same sky,

moving through hours that do not belong to me.

Perhaps I should wish to be free of it.

I do not.

Let me be haunted.

Let every road return me to you,

every silence speak of you,

every night end with your name

resting somewhere behind my teeth.

For if loving you is the thing

that finally ruins me,

then let it.

There are worse ways for a man to be destroyed

than by having known the one person

he could never bear to forget.