When I close my eyes, I can see you standing there in front of me.  Your curious mix of vanilla-scented tobacco and that spicy scent that is uniquely you assaults my nose and I breathe deep.  It’s only in my dreams that I can get this close to you, that I can smell you, that I can see those green-grey-gold eyes flicker in my direction before you move faster than thought and are standing so close to me that I can feel your breath on my face.

Then you touch me and your fingers are electric.  Just a brush, that’s all it takes for me to feel fire from the tip of my head down to my toes.  And in the back of my mind I know this is just a dream, it’s only a dream, but that doesn’t stop me from reaching up and taking your hands in mine and kissing those fingertips that send such power through my body.  I can taste you, that peculiar zinging flavor of cinnamon and heat that fills my mouth and my lungs and I can’t help but feel like I’m drowning in you, but I’m drowning in a good way and I never want to stop.

The alarm clock is going off and your eyes are sad as you start to disappear; I cry out and reach for you, but it’s too late, my eyes are already open.  Open on the dingy room, cold, empty, a blank canvas that we were supposed to decorate together.  It’s why we bought the house, unfurnished; we were going to troll art galleries for appropriate pieces, we were going to paint the rooms and buy antique furniture that had history to it.  Because we both loved the histories of things, their stories, and our own histories…learning your story like you learned mine, in whispers and shouts, trickles falling from our lips like the first drops of rain before a storm.

It stays empty now, this house, aside from the most basic of furniture.  A bed, the first piece we bought; the frame, they said, dated back to the Victorian era and is certainly over the top with swirls on the heavy wood and patterns that are distracting to the eye and give you headaches if you look too long.  But we bought it because it was crazy, because it was so ostentatious; it made you laugh.  It made us laugh, and we immediately began planning how we’d do our room.

I wander through this so-empty house, trailing my fingers along the rough whiteness of the walls.  I keep thinking that I’ll hear you humming as you make coffee; not that immortals like you need coffee, but you always make it and you always drink it with me.  It’s our morning ritual.  

It was our morning ritual.  I have to get used to thinking about you in the past tense; the few friends I have say that you were good for nothing anyways, that I should just get over you and find myself a new man.  But how can I do that, when everything makes me think of you?  The smell of cinnamon, of vanilla; the sound of cheerful whistling and the slap of boots against the pavement.  A dozen times a day, more, I think I hear you, feel you close to me and I turn, but it’s never you; it’s some workman whistling on his way to break, some old man smoking a pipe, some child eating a sticky bun.  But never you.

I wander back to the bedroom to get dressed for work; business suit, black, with my white shirt and proper shoes.  I remember that you would always chuckle when you saw me, tease me, call me “stuffy shirt” and run your fingers through my hair.  You love my hair.

…Loved my hair.

Back out into the kitchen now to make myself coffee before work; it’s never as good as the stuff you would make, but you were always magical with everything you touched.  Even me; you made me grow with your touch and your smile and your sweet words convincing me that I wasn’t the worthless heap that everyone had always said I was.

And then you disappeared.  Vanished without a trace; I woke up one morning and you were gone, the familiar solidarity of your body laid next to mine no longer there.  Your boots were still by the door, everything the way it was except that your leather jacket, that duster that I always teased you about, wasn’t hanging in the closet any more and all your clothes were gone.  Like you’d never existed.  But the smell of you was everywhere…in your pillow, soaked into the sheets, coming off of the very walls.

I sit down at the table that still has paint samples and colors scattered over it, sipping at my coffee.  I feel a little like the woman out of Great Expectations, who sits and waits in her wedding gown, who doesn’t touch the room with the decaying cake and all the clocks set to the time her lover jilted her and left her at the altar.  Because I’ve left everything the same, even though it’s been two months now; I don’t want to get rid of your boots, in case you come back.  I don’t want to paint the walls, in case it’s a color you don’t like.  I don’t want to buy furniture without you because I don’t want you to miss out on the stories.

I call work, tell them I’m sick, that I won’t be able to make it in; hanging up before I can hear the shrill voice of the boss’s secretary begin voicing her complaints, I lay on the cool tile of the kitchen floor and close my eyes.

In my dreams is the only place I can be with you.  I’ll just stay there until you can come back to me.