Empty Sheets

Empty Sheets

The soft shades of a summer night spread throughout my bedroom. I lay alone and silently think about the love that has left. Our time together will soon become memories. The present will be gone, replaced with an uncertain future. I wish to freeze the momentum of infinite time and protect the present from the future - to cradle each dying moment as a mother would cradle her child. Sadly, I know this is impossible. All my efforts to deter the birth of a new day have so far failed.

I lay pressed against a newly foreign mattress. Yesterday, it was the welcoming home of comfortable love and sensual adventure. Today it exists only as a material object: some cotton sheets, a duvet and an unremarkable mattress. I reach to my side and attempt to feel a hand, a night-dress, soft velvety skin - but all I grasp is an empty duvet. I listen for the hushed sounds of breath and the faint rustle of sheets, but all I hear is midnight traffic and my own muffled sobs. Warm tears replace the soft hair and beautiful face which once occupied the pillow next to mine. I sigh. The duvet swallows me whole. What was once wholesome has now parted. It has broken. I am broken.