716 S. Logan

from my last night in our apartment: 

How can a beautiful blue also be black? In it's not dark blue. The sky is blue and black at the same time. This is dusk. The dusk of us. Crayons cornflower blue and black. You exist like that inside me. Outside me. You are both. Not against each other but the same. To put you in both places. But the sky can do it. And I touch the sky and I touch you so I can make it be. Stunning blue and black. Not streaming against each other but laying across each other as your body used to lay against mine. You are darkness an light and you are still mine. I don't mind either. I could take you then, generous and selfish, good and bad, seeking and flawed. I can take you now. For all. It is harder now. Absence wants absolutes. It wants to make your memory one thing or the other. But you are neither. And I love you. Even in your irrevocable absence. 

I'm wrapped up in you. The shirt I first stole and took that sexy, sleepy series of photos in. And the sweatpants you loved and I haven't washed because they still have a fading white wash of our lovemaking on the front of the waistband. I don't remember that time that's left it's mark. But I remember so many morning times where I'd be cranky and you'd cheer me with your urgency for me and tuck your favorite sweatpants down to slide into me against the bathroom. Whispering that we were going to be late. Me pouting and you playing pragmatic. So even though I've worn them since then on our wedding day by a fire you should have built but didn't know I could, I can't wash them. Relishing the smell of fire as I relish you and me against the soft skin below my navel. Holding our love against my womb as if we were dancing, you behind me and me pressed against you, your arms wrapped me from behind, lazy swaying into our future. A family never realized but held so dearly. 

I am yours. And now I have to carve out the piece of me that is yours. But I won't put it in a box. I will hold it with reverence. The part of me that is yours that no one else can't touch. It is sacred. And I carry it forward. And I don't want to spend this last night resenting you for not being able to see how that was possible. A part of me is always yours. And yes I do worry that one day they'll be nothing left with these gems held and otherwise occupied but I have to hope that it grows. This love. Our love. It is apart but something else regenerates. This capacity for love and hope and good. You couldn't see that. And I have to forgive you.