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Surely I no longer love you

I don't cocoon in your sweater,
the enveloping one, with the fleecy hood
in which, if I inhaled, I'd find you.

I don't whisper, pathetically, "I miss you"
while tears cluster
and my body folds over and over
(because surely being compact is closer to disappearing)
but even if you halve endlessly
I suppose you never do stop existing.

I don't search for your softness

in the valley beside others' collar bones
or reach into their eyes
groping for the way you looked at me
the way you tugged me in with silent affection.

I don't snap my head around
when I hear a laugh remotely like yours
(or even a cough or sneeze, sometimes)
I can't remember it's exact timbre anymore, I'm sure.

I am not in denial
and never give names to the family we might have had
or find my gaze trapped in the photo from the Tibetan daycare
where the toddlers clung to you like static
and you looked just like a mother.

I didn't dye my hair fire-hydrant red
to become someone new
who never knew you
or to invent a new vibrancy in my life.

(Though I'll admit to a green shade of loneliness
that surrounds me like steam sometimes
and a coldness I can't shake
that forces shivering and my knees to snap my chest)

and yet, somehow, on the phone
you sound exactly the same.
(only not mine)

But it's January after all
and soon slush will freeze and tinkle under sensible boots
the wind will flush my cheeks in a mimic of emotion
and surely, in February
(or March or April)
I will no longer love you.

Learn more about this author, Rachel Small.
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