Breathe, a vignette

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And now I lay awake in the middle of the night thinking about what I had. Memories of you making me laugh dance in my head and taunt me but they never drag me back down. In the loneliest of nights I still feel his furry little body curled up against the small of my back and I can even feel him rise and fall with breath. In the dark I can trick myself into believing that it's all still there, that we're in that little waterside condo with tile floors and the street lamp outside is illuminating everything just enough to see your face in the dark and I reach out and stroke your beard underneath your mouth and run a finger across your lips and you don't wake up and I hear him purr by my feet. But there's a blackness now, no illumination, just a room so dark I can't see how empty your side of the bed is, or that it's a different bed, or that it's a different room, or remember that you're a complete asshole and that my cat is dead. The sheets are cold and I stretch my arms out just for torture and run them up and down the empty side and underneath the pillow as if I'm reaching for you, as if you're just in the bathroom, as if I'll call your name and you'll answer from down the hall, ice clinking the side of a glass of fresh water. But you're not, and it is torture. I grab the mattress sheet and pull my self up onto my forearms and dig my head into the empty side of the bed as if you've sunken into the mattress or beneath the floorboards. As if your beating heart still maddens me the way the rise and fall of my cats phantom chest does. I hear you making noises in the shower, I hear myself muffling a laugh. I see his ears perk up. I reach to calm him but there is nothing but the hum of a fan in an empty black room and in the wake of depression and the welling of tears there is relief. I take a breath. I am completely alone. I exhale. I have only myself to blame. I let go. I am only responsible for this body, this heart, these hands and the completeness of my own being. I start to break beneath the crushing pain in my chest, I stop myself. I am whole. My thoughts return to love and gratitude. I feel nothing but relief. You are gone, and I am so happy. Another deep breath. A long winded sigh. There is no more longing. My dreams are of me moving into to my sanctuary and making it my own. My dreams are of becoming, which is also my present. My dreams are the intention of my reality. They are my rebuild. In this moment I lay under neon stars, I hear my family move around, I close my eyes and I'm transported to the place I'll soon be, the place I'll call my own. But here in this moment, in this space, I am whole, I am happy, I am still, I am broken, I am rebuilding, I find balance in the blackness between where I am and where I want to be. I find peace with the memory of our little family and our little time together. I let my own arms rock me to sleep to thoughts of lamps and pictures and the voices of the records I'll play and the taste of bourbon. I whisper in my mind over and over until I am asleep: Everything I want I have. Be patient. More is coming.