PART ONE
the awkward and irrational logic behind
missing someone would be hard to
explain to a small child except maybe if
the small child knows that feeling sad
is okay and you tell the small child that
missing someone is an illness of the brain.
my bed is a mess, it misses you. it’s been
having nightmares about being suffocated to
death with a red pillow. to calm the bed down
I have read the bed a bedtime story of printed-out
e-zine articles on ways to overcome a heartbreak.
intimacy is addictive. staring at the back of your
head at night is a small personal interaction that I miss
but didn’t expect to. sometimes in my sleep I want
to bump into you or else maybe roll over you but can’t.
I should have rolled over you very hard in my sleep,
to crush you into the bed and prevent you from leaving.
to invest a lot of energy into thinking about you
constantly is to considerably hate myself.
I miss you and I miss you naked. those are two
completely separate ways of missing you.
the bed is being a jerk to me. in the morning I wake up
with bed hair ten percent worse than usual. the bed is
accusing me I think of not missing you genuinely and just
being a weak person unable to cope with the large,
unfathomable feeling of suddenly having no one to care about.
as usual my feelings will adopt the physical shape of an
upside-down heart in the open office document, or at least
this is what the shape looks like to me. does it look different to
you; yes the physical shape of my feelings is a rorschach test.
what is right with me; very little.
I need a moment please.
PART TWO
lately I have been missing you in the form of
angel-shaped drool stains on my pillow.
a printed-out e-zine article informed me that occupying the mind
is the best way to get over missing someone, so yesterday
I worked almost all day on school stuff and lit stuff and emails.
most days I put more effort into emails than into school stuff.
at the end of the day I was tired and wanted to not think
anymore and to not stare at anything anymore, just
maybe close my eyes and make out with someone but
there was no one to make out with, is this tragic or what;
a refreshing way to overcome my pride would be
to send you an email whose subject line reads,
‘I miss you’ and whose body reads, ‘see subject line.’
the bed looks depressed. its red sheets remind it
of your red winter coat and also of the red cover of
that book you gave me. the bed misses our bed talk.
at night, I can hear it make dolphin sounds in an
attempt to reach out and communicate. the noises
bounce off the walls and return to the bed, which
makes the bed feel shunned and very discouraged.
my serotonin level is often at its highest when no one is around.
to sabotage myself is to prevent others from doing so. what is
the meaning of missing you; a subject matter to tackle in a future
poem maybe, one whose best lines aren’t even the funniest.
in my sleep, I rolled over from the bed and fell on the floor. I felt calm
because I have no particular associative memories of you and the floor.
one way to power through this self-imposed passive-affective mood
would be to do push-ups by the bed until I am bulked up and muscular,
an entirely different person capable of rolling over in the bed multiple
times, creating heat and making the bed as warm as when you were in it.
why does the empty bed keep happening to me;
I probably deserve it. I need a moment please.
PART THREE
I have been more of a facebook profile than
a person lately. yesterday the status updates
were cascading down the page like a zen waterfall
so I sat still and listened. what does the waterfall
says; the subtext is unknown, and possibly nothing.
the bed is in a coma now. I said your name to the bed
and it shivered so I put an additional blanket on the bed.
missing you is one problem, how to conclude this poem
is another. I don’t think ahead, I think through. to write this
poem was mostly a ploy to kill time until our situation evolved.
but nothing happened. I feel the same now as I felt on the very
first line of this poem, except maybe for the disconnect between
what I do and what I want, which has somehow accentuated itself.
do you remember when the bed was so happy to see
you that it jumped on itself; that never happened, I lied.
I just wanted to leave you with a pleasant image of the bed.
throughout this very long process of mildly deranged
soul-searching I have determined that lovesickness is
a discouraging crisis for which tangible solutions include
a large black tea and stepping away from the keyboard.
but missing you is also a hiddenness of the
mind, the devoted, uncertain sensation that
perhaps there will never be certitudes, just more
feasible or less feasible longings and desires.
which reminds me,
let me state how hot you are: very.
can I start the poem over; I am not sure
you can do that. I need a moment please.