[waiting for you to exist]

i wish you lived next door-
we'd stay up late and meet halfway
in the frozen grass,
run hunched over into the hay barn
and exist alone in the smallness of morning

each day you appear and disappear,
slipping through my fingers
like the life spills out of this
thinning body.

pieces of you return in everything,
despite my shutting eyes-
i wade through crowds trying to find your smell,
the one pull i can't escape

so i'm looking for you,
parting the blinds with
cold fingers in the night,
watching for your light to come on-
quietly waiting for you to exist