loss is just a word

loss is just a word

I am breathing water.
I am breathing water.
you know a body's got to breathe.

"Undertow," R.E.M., New Adventures in Hi-Fi 

you're putting on a shirt
a shirt I'll never see

"Lucky You," The National, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers

loss is just a word for where you no longer are

with me

but losing you?

not something i can really do

(on the night of winter solstice
in the time when you were gone

i dreamed of summer's sun

and woke alone&sweating)

absence&forgetting are frail foes to memory

coursing through my veins

you are everywhere&always

although i am not sure you ever trusted

that i could smell you enter any room

even before i would see you

so on a starry full-moon night

or when the sun is high and the day is warm

i can lie on the earth and press my palms to dirt or grass

and, yes, there you are

walking sock-footed across carpet in a room

where i am not