My fingers linger

wrinkled t-shirt

stuffed

under my mattress

I feel so lonely

missing him

I hold the cotton

to my nose

and sniff his scent

pungent, masculine

and remember

who he was

and what he meant

to me

why did he leave?

I still loved him

remembered his laugh

the way

we would stroll

along our beach

and he would say

how much he loved me

memories flooded

the wetness

of our lovemaking

the whisper

of our words

the feel

of his body

and the day

when I wept

as the rich earth

was shoveled

over his casket

and he vanished

from my life

but never

from my heart

i find a bra under the bed

that doesn't belong to you

and it doesn't belong to me

lately you've been gone

so often it feels as if

i live alone.

you haven't been in

our (my) bedroom

for months.

i don't know where you're going

and i don't want to know.

but playing the guessing game is

killing me.

my nerves are strung out,

i lash out at the walls

but i stay silent when you come home

because this pain i feel is a lonely sort of intimacy;

intimacy that i've never felt with you.

we've had our passionate nights,

but i obviously mean nothing to you.

so i'm trying to pretend

that you're not everything to me.

this pain i feel is a

lonely intimacy

and every day you leave again

i dance with the ghosts of my tears

and wait for you to come home.

once we were just girls,

"experimenting" they said

and now i wonder are you

experimenting

with me?

i live alone

in this shell of a heart

that used to be full of you.

I never wanted to know

when your friend told me

years ago

I walked away

ears deaf

to an ugly truth

I could not believe

indeed

I would not

let it soil

my reality,

I wanted to live

only

in the world we built

where we loved

happily

ever

after.

Gone now

so long

alone with

my grief

I empty

the room

where we loved

a lifetime.

Under the bed,

our bed,

I find a

dust-covered

scrap of silk

and lace

I never owned.

My heart

frozen with grief

thaws

burns

and turns to ash

in that moment

of revelation

before

I stuff

the lie

in a black plastic

garbage bag

along with

all the other

meaningless

trash

I never wanted know.

I was laying in my bed listening to the wake up call of my annoying alarm clock, urging me to get out of bed from somewhere deep in my closet where I had thrown it two seconds earlier. It was the weekend and I wanted to sleep in but clearly my alarm clock didn't know that.

I groaned and rolled out of bed, falling splat on the floor and feeling the cold wood push against my bare legs where my night gown had rolled up. Then being the natural human being I was, I crawled like a spider across the floor and into my closet to find the alarm clock and kill it.

Two minutes later, yes it took my sleepy brain that long to pinpoint the noise, I shut off my alarm clock and pushed to a standing position.

I started to push aside clothing on the rack, trying to find something I could wear, most of it had stains and rips from being human. I then came to a hot pink biker jacket that had never ever been in my closet. How I knew it wasn't mine you ask? Well first off I had never worn anything pink in my life, especially hot pink. Second It had no rips and stains like 99% of my outfits and last but not least it was stiff and tight looking, a very logical reason to why I was about to burn it.

I grabbed a bright yellow, loose dress that had minimum damage and walked into the bathroom. I stripped out of my nightgown and popped in the shower to wash my hair. The water felt good cascading down over my body and it was twenty minutes later I stepped out to dry off. I pulled the dress over my head and stood in front of the mirror, brushing my teeth and hair. Once I was done I grabbed the pink jacket from my closet and dashed downstairs.

I grabbed an apple and rushed out the door to my car and climbed in, throwing the jacket way in the back. I put the car into drive and pulled out of my driveway. I drove down the road to an abandoned parking lot I had found in the back of the woods a year ago.

I looked around then started piling wood in the middle of the parking lot, and then I lit a large fire. I walked over to the car to grab the jacket but I couldn't find it. I hissed, I must have only thought I brought it. I started walking back towards the fire when I heard another car pull up. I turned around to see a police car and a man getting out.

"What are you doing miss?" He asked walked over to me "You shouldn't be lighting fires in parking lots, much less this close to the woods, which are quite close to the woodworks."

I sighed then said "I had this..." I waved my hands wildly "I guess a jacket in my car that I was going to burn but now it is missing."

"And how could this jacket be missing if you put it in your car?" He stared at me buntly.

"I don't know!" I said my voice raising.

His hand went to his belt and he said "Why don't I take a look in your car, miss?"

He walked over to my car and opened the unlocked down and looked around. Then he strutted back over to me with, you guessed it, the pink jacket.

"This jacket?" He asked, holding it up.

I gapped at the jacket. "That wasn't there before!" I yelled, frustrated and annoyed as he pointed towards the police cruiser.

"Why don't you get in there and we can take a drive over to the station?"

"But I don't need to." I stated trying to keep calm.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way?" He said. "I for one would prefer for this to be easy."

I sighed and climbed in the cruiser, he climbed in the front and locked the door. He backed the car up and then headed towards the station.

At the station I was quizzed and my fingerprints were taken. Having no reason to hold me they did let me go an hour later. I knew I wasn't crazy but I would need to figure out what that jacket meant.

TO BE CONTINUED