DESPERATE

 

Desperate (Reimagined)  

I am desperate—

desperate enough to admit it,

to let the word hang in the air,

heavy as the ache in my chest.

I am at the mercy of her words,

her promises that linger like echoes,

her imagery that paints the world

in colors I can almost touch.  

My imagination, relentless,

traces the contours of her dreams,

mapping every detail, every whisper,

until I can see her, feel her,

as if she were here.

But she is not.  

I know her, head to toe,

every curve, every shadow,

down to her core—

and this knowledge is a blade,

sharp and unforgiving.

It punishes, taunts,

teases with barbed-wire precision,

lacerating my heart,

leaving it raw, exposed,

ripped open in the missing of her.  

Are times supposed to be this trying?

These jagged minutes, these endless hours,

each one a splinter in my skin,

each second a reminder of the distance.

Or did someone forget to set the timer,

leaving me suspended in this purgatory

of separation?  

Waiting becomes a tumor,

a malignant weight that grows,

metastasizing with each passing day,

heavier, more bothersome, more terrifying.

It spreads through my thoughts,

through my dreams,

through the hollow spaces she once filled.  

Each parting kiss is a wound,

each dialtone a cruel reminder

of how small I am without her,

how vast the world feels

when she is not beside me.  

And yet, in this desperation,

in this unbearable ache,

I find a strange clarity:

love is not gentle,

it is a storm, a reckoning,

a force that tears us open

and leaves us bare.

But even in the pain,

even in the longing,

I would not trade this torment

for the numbness of not knowing her.  

For she is worth every jagged minute,

every sleepless night,

every desperate breath.

And so I wait,

small and trembling,

for the moment when the distance dissolves,