I Miss You

Darkness has settled in around me.

I've worked myself into the ground. Dawn until beneath the moon.  The cicadas and the frogs of my youth cry out.  A break from the labor to light a smoke and rest my overworked legs. My ears embrace the sounds of the southern night.  Calling out to me like a prodigal friend.  They are different now without you.  I hear a different tune. Somber and low. A silent grief upon the hills.  A heavy sadness.  And I look up to the darkened windows. Where once there was such life and warmth. The house sits empty and unfinished.  A shadow of the past. Nights on the front porch swing and cracking walnuts on the drive.

Its almost as though you're still there.  Inside that facade of the house you built. From the life you gave us. I almost expected you to greet me at the door and usher me inside for breakfast and coffee stiff and black. 

But you never came. Even today its too hard to wrap the sordid mesh of my brain around your absence. 

A house without a lady. Fields without an owner. A family without a Matriarch.  A black sheep without a Grandmother's gentle hand filled with faith.  And I miss you always but even more so today than the day before.