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In Absentia: A love story for the lonely heart.

It is enough knowing you were here in my absence. The depression where your body lay is still marked out in rumpled sheets and half made blankets. When I sleep alone I only take up half the bed, on my side leaning in as though to curl up against the ghost of those hours you slept without me. Sometimes it's enough to keep away the cold.

My heart wants someone to come home to; my body, a home. A place that isn't simply a designated space set aside in the margins of other lives. There is belongingness in touch; my lips tickled by the short hairs at the nap of your neck; the reassuring bulk of your chest against my arms. The few hours before dawn and other obligations drag me away are precious. If I hold on tight enough perhaps they won't slip away. Soon enough the buzz, the bell and obligation unwrap me and pull me away from warmth, closeness, safety out into the world of work and I'm alone at a test pouring over papers and not connecting with faceless voices across a telephone line.

By the time I am home, only your outline in the bed. I am aware of your echo more often than your actual touch.

Learn more about this author, Joy Mosenfelder.
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