If You're Gone

If you’re gone the days will go by faster, since the minutes won’t be so tied up with waiting for you to come home. If you’re gone, the skyline that has become my fortress will shine like heaven, will clog the black hole you left in my confidence. It won’t be until I lock myself into my bed for sleep that the independence, the invincibility I feel at having rebuilt my life will vanish.

If you’re gone I’ll feel small and disposable, I’ll start walking with my head down and singing songs about clinging to lost love. My morning shower will take fifteen minutes longer, because I had to stand under the hot water to sing the words to one more song you would never have understood the meaning of. My morning coffee will be drunk with my fictitious companions who visit me in the form of old 90’s sitcoms. I will sit back and laugh at the way life’s many obstacles dissolve with ‘I’m sorry’ or a martini and a muffin.

If you’re gone you’ll free up space in the soul of my existence to turn you into something that you’re not. You will give birth to a new self, and I will be the one to own this new you. This new man you’ll create will smoke cigarettes that don’t make me think of cancer and death. His willful ignorance about the world around him will be charming instead of the catalyst to another fight. When he refuses to hold my hand, I’ll believe it’s because he was trying to protect me from something, maybe himself. And instead of asking him about it, I’ll thank him by not resisting his desire to make love one more time.

If you’re gone I’ll forget you. But you won’t leave.