Sometimes, despite the change, I get caught in a missing that is paralyzingly overwhelming. I miss the way your breath felt on my neck when you'd lean over in chapel and whisper something in my ear. I miss your hands and your forearms and the way you'd furrow your brow. I even miss your horrible combination of cowboy boots and straight-leg jeans. I miss the way you look walking towards me, sun in your hair--beaming. I miss coffee conversations about literature and yes--I fear most days that I will never find anyone as insightful as you. I still marvel at the way you always knew exactly what to say to move, stir and even break me. But I also know where to put these things. Away in a box in the top of my closet, I lock up the missing. I savor it quietly when it comes, I've half convinced myself that it is poetry. I count it joy.
 Immediately after, I become acutely aware of the feeling in my fingers and toes, the hairs on my arms stand up, I am forced to my acknowledge my state of aloneness. I, inside my own self am the constant you could never be.
  I suppose those thoughts are the kind that make me okay again.
  I open my own car doors. I hang my own pictures. I pay for my own meals.
  Missing you at times is somewhat thrilling; it makes me grateful for a love like me.