My fingers lightly grazed your arm,
Hairs tickling sensitive tips
They slid along your shoulders,
Feeling their breadth and strength.
My hips tucked themselves into yours,
As we slept.
Your arm curled behind your back
To pull me more snugly into you.
Our bodies tucked and curved into one another, one passion filled night after another.
Toes touching as we drifted to sleep. Or pinkie fingers twined together. Hands clasped.
We always touched as we nodded off into dreams.
How long ago is forever?
My body moves restlessly through these without you nights,
In this widow life…
Pillows tucked into my own curves,
My hips, my breasts, seeking your body.
My head rests upon your 15-year old pillow.
Will I, at some point, feel the imprint of your head there,
Comforting me?
My one arm curls under the pillow, hand stretched out to the side,
As my legs tuck up, as if into yours.
One hand reaches out to the rectangular box covered with images of you alive and healthy,
Pictures with edges curling from time and wear.
So easily could I lift the top and dig my hands inside to free the gray ashes…what remains of you…
Dig my hands into the mix of gray remains and dead flowers
Spread them upon the cushions where I sleep
And coat my lonely body, in what remains of you.
But I don’t.
That would be weird. Right?
My other hand comes to rest on a shape that I trace as a triangle.
Red white and blue.
A simple triangle.
I see it in my mind’s eye, in the darkness, this triangle that has traveled so many miles with me.
Fingertips slide along the neat edges of the hem along one side.
This part is blue.
They glide upwards to the tip and follow it down to find a raised star shape.
This part is white.
I spell out S-t-a-r as I brush the shape lightly…
There is the very slight sound of a paper crinkling…a note you gave me in our early years, found after your death and tucked into a fold of the triangle.
Sunshine…like a beautiful flower, you always warm my heart. With love always, Sarge.
A small round disc makes a faint outline through the fabric…
A USAF coin, gifted to our son in Basic Training, gifted to me by our son.
MSgt Dearing. Recognition. Memory. Honor.
I confess…sometimes my arms pull that triangle into my chest
As I seek elusive slumber,
And my mind drifts back to our nights together, bodies curved into one another.
No worry about the tears blinding my eyes; the dark night has already done that.
No stopping the stitching spasms rocking my heart and soul.
It’s night, and I can let the feels be.
I clutch the colors more tightly to my chest,
Try to soften the tension in my body and let my mind drift, drift, drift…
Back to all of our nights and our days and nights again as our years played one into another,
And I was loved, and I loved.
My body curls into yours in my dreams…
And I drift….
