WRITTEN IN WATER

I stand beside the bed and consider the pillow where your head has been lying: it still retains an impression, like a thumb-print in softened wax. I am looking at the space that you occupied, as though it holds a significance. As though by displacing the air there, by touching the sheets, you have somehow imbued it with yourself. I look at it like it could save me. Because they couldn’t save you, the tubes they disconnected when their elixirs failed hang limply now. I remain staring at the space hoping to find you, but it is just a bed, just linen, just air.