Memory

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There is a hint of you here,

In these walls,

The smell of you suspended mid-flight,

Teasing me, like a cruel trick, there but not quite.

I open the windows, I let the world in to clear the air and yet all I welcome in is futility. Every breeze bathing these walls in more of you.

How do I put into words the feeling that is making my spine tingle?

How is it that someone that was a stranger to my senses now occupies every sense present?

I lay my head against my pillow and there you are again, lingering in these sheets, weaved through these threads.

I want to pull away,

But I keep pulling closer,

Wrestling between the logic of my heart and the want for more.

For just another second of this.

The sheets come off,

the machine tells me a cycle ends in forty-five minutes.

But you have rubbed off on me.

There is a hint of you against my skin.

Not so much as a touch between us and yet I am bathed in it.

I rinse myself, I scrub incessantly.

The sheets lay drying, the wind sweeps in for a final breath.

Sigh.

It is gone,

You are, with the setting sun.

There are new sheets on my bed.

I have cleansed my body and yet you remain.

Inexplicably.

I fear you will.

At best you are my muse, a creative fuel, but I fear the worst.

There may be a hint of something more.

I fail to put in words, for how could a stranger come to be so familiar.

You are still here.

Your laughter echoes.

Not here.

Not in the walls.

Not on my sheets.

Not on my skin.

It echoes within.

I fail to make sense of it, but I fear you are more than a muse, a moment.

You are a memory.