A Life Without You

The etching shadows taunt me
In their abandoned care and malleable spirits.
For I am stationed to face the day’s wrath,
Laying on the floor in the ruddy heat. Stiff wooden shelves my cage, stacked high with dampened memories.
And this carpet, millions of bristles lost to the fingers touch, proudly head themselves against
My skin. 
Unpleasant and irritating, they leave their patterned disarray all over my body. Millions of reminders of a loss I was unable to understand.
Abrasions of dyed wool sift about with time. 
Endless, cumbersome.

Time felt steady when you were with me. Minutes trickled to hours sixty times over.
Our eyes clear to the tremendous rattle of life, and surroundings were there
To call to us.
Strange simplicity weaved its way about our footing, on the pallid sand. 
When the water greeted us with a taking warmth, and ray-stricken sea churned as silk from the slow-burning heat of day. 

It left its eager guests overlain in salt and untold admiration.

And I was left in awe of our lucid significance, to draw tired palms to the plunging currents,
Accumulated one raindrop at a time.
We melded together the splintered beings. Among a slowly capsizing world, we held together. 
Cohesive droplets trembling at the cruel embrace of the wind.

And in our hands.