Between Pauses

Darling

I don’t miss you loudly.
It’s quieter than that.
The day pauses
when I think of your voice,
the way warmth lingers
after a hand has let go.

You stay with me
in the spaces between things-
between meetings,
between sentences,
between the moment I want to reach out
and the moment I don’t.

You never ask me to come closer,
yet I lean in.
Not out of need,
but because something in me
recognizes the shape of you.

Even waiting feels different now.
Less empty.
More aware.
Time itself seems to know
I am holding something delicate.

You don’t hurry me.
And somehow
that is how I know.

Perhaps that’s where longing lives-
not in what is missing,
but in how gently
I carry the thought of you,
like a promise
I don’t need to open yet.

Still sweet.
Still patient.
Just deeper now-
rooted,
quiet,
growing.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

I picture these thoughts being about a lover, but suppose they might be in regards to something else. Going with what seems obvious, I see a mature attitude towards another--one that has known ecstasy, but also misery. Just my guess. Nice work, my friend.

[Jacques - iNkwire]

This feels like a piece about a colleague and lover to me. Beautiful, frustrating, and emotionally arrhythmic. If I'm reading this right, I've been there before and it is *very* frustrating to be in. So eloquently (and perhaps painfully) written!

[Brad Dehler]

Very intimate snapshot, this seems to me, of a lover. And the spaces between when feeling (& not) the love. This got me to think about what you wrote: "Recognizing the shape of you" and "I am holding something delicate". As a man, it arises the defense "I am not delicate", then in the most intimate of situations, when one on one- would want the woman to embrace that delicateness. How, though hard, still made of flesh and sensitive.