I'm Keeping the Coat When the Sun Goes Down

Wanting you has become a visceral thing
Descending from dream into every day
I simply wait for the longing to come
an expected afternoon occurrence around 3pm
Noon winds down, the arms of clocks sweeping low
Wondering why my arms are empty of you
Where are you to discuss the day, talk stories, share poetry?
We're supposed to watch the sun sink slowly,
holding our breath as the sky smartly changes coats,
sunbeams giving way to a swollen night
Convinced my collarbone is bereft of your teeth
for no good reason at all

I know you'd put your coat over my shoulders
in the falling chill
Just as surely as I know the glint in your eye,
the unspoken ache forever beneath your words,
and the field of fireflies you've held in secret for my escape
As familiar as the dream when you slid your arms about my waist,
your face in the mirror

I find you, again again in my mind and on the page
A thousand miles away, right next to me, all at once
Can't pinpoint when this, this something, began
An unconscious spell when you picked up my book, perhaps,
in a dusty room on forgotten shelves

One of the first to see that I am hiding inside my words,
a blurred and clawed vision in the shadows of images and conjugation
Cannot decide if this makes you foolish or insanely brave,
or mad as a lead filled hatter

I need your words like a tiger needs stripes
They are a string of lanterns, guiding me from dreaming into
the shifting wake of morning
Even when I wake without you,
your coat hanging on the back of my door,
from a night before that has yet to happen

Not certain if the whys matter at all now
Beginning to not be certain of a great many things
Except for your coat,
that I am quite sure about,
as well as your teeth marks on my collar
and slowly slowly
needing your words
wanting you
more than I thought possible