Allow us this time.

Be here with me in these final moments.

You insist on parting from me even though it devastates your heart.

Don’t leave me alone in our sorrow.

I need you to feel this with me.

Hold me close and touch my face. I want to remember the feel of your hands on my cheeks.

Soften and say all the words you feel that I most long to hear.

Kiss me with the lips of a man who knows that every time we meet, it may be the last.

Lay yourself bare to me and expose your raw. Accept my brokenness in return.

Be present with me in these final moments.

Let what is left of the light between us carry us through the dark one more time.

I woke full of you.

I could feel my soul lean into your pull.

The heat of your embrace was palpable.

The air was thick with your scent.

I woke fully, an ache in my soul, filled with sorrow.

The tears were real. Your presence was not.

Life is different now.

I live in the After.

You have stripped my soul and left me with deep pain and searing loss.

I am changed, wholly and irrevocably.

I can never return to the Before.

I am raw.

You left.

I can still feel your arms around me. Your breath on my neck as you whisper, I love you. Your seed seeping from me.

You are imprinted all over my body and my mind.

You look at me quickly with pain in your eyes, saying my name and I love you one more time.

I hear your breath catch in your throat as you say those last words to me. That sound, the catch, it is your tears coming to the surface.

It echos loudly in my ears.

With those words and your tears, you are gone.

I’m staring at the door.

I feel like if I hold very still time will stop. I hold my breath.

Maybe time will go backward, maybe time will pause long enough to ease the ache in my soul. Maybe.

To have the last night again, to have you one more time.

Eyes closed tight as tears rush down my face I wish hard, like a child who believes in prayer and that God is listening.

Please, I beg, I’m not strong enough.

I stand looking at the bed we shared last night.

I bury my face in your pillow, still warm. Your scent is everywhere.

It is too much to bear.

I love you.

I quickly make the bed trapping your smell, your being, the memory and reality that is you. I tuck the remnants of us between the sheets. It’s the most intimate place I can keep them.

Except for in my heart.

My heart shattered.

Broken pieces. I gather them up in my skirt and look at them through my tears.

What a mess. I’m scolding myself, I should have been more careful. Now I’m left with a heart broken all over the place. All these bits and pieces. They begin to slip from my skirt turned makeshift basket.

One piece, in particular, catches my eye as it falls to the floor. A memory, still vivid, yet blurred by my tears. That one, that piece is the feel of the first time he touched my thigh. That piece carries with it a sexually charged energy, excitement. I don’t want to misplace that one. Another one floats near. It’s a smell, warm and heady. The smell of frankincense and patchouli of clean and exercise. The scent distracts me. I kneel slowly, carefully. My skirt basket is full. And it doesn’t matter how careful I am more pieces begin to fall. Memories, the first time we saw each other, his singing voice, the feel of his hand on my cheek and my chest, the words said and secrets whispered. I’m crying harder now clinging wildly to all the broken pieces of my heart.

I need a bigger container. I look around but all I see is my undone empty bed he just left. I smash down the blankets and dump all the pieces in. Some of them land and some float away. How will I ever recover all the broken pieces of my heart?

I am tired. I lay down among the pieces and make a nest. Curling up with what I have left, I gather them around me. Crying, I’m at a loss as to how to repair the broken pieces of my heart. I sigh. I know I will eventually have to stitch them back together. But I am so tired, and any hope for a working beating heart is gone.

What I want to do is look at them one by one, to feel it all again, as I put them in a box. Seal it shut and tomorrow when I can breathe a little bit more, send them to a watery grave in the Lake. Watch them float away and sink to the rocks on the bottom. The box disintegrating and releasing all the broken pieces of my heart to be baptized and given new life far away from me.

But in the end, I will gather each broken piece and sew for a long time. Each broken piece, sharp and cutting, my fingers and hands bleeding as I stitch. The pain will be unbearable. But I will sew until my broken heart starts beating again. Lopsided, ugly, and full of holes, but formed enough to put back in my chest. I won’t look at it too closely, or think of him. It would shatter again.