The Slow-Cooked Sentence

In your absence, I’ve taken up exercising. I practice breathing. I take short breaths that leave me dizzy, long breaths that pour into my belly and force it to expand, loud breaths that sound as if I’m breathing fire, and secret breaths that stir the butterflies drifting above my bed where I sleep, alone, because, by concentrating on the basic, thoughtless act of breathing, I know I exist, independent of you.

At first, the loss of you was a novelty, a skip in the rhythm, and I enjoyed the altered tune. I cooked a quiche and ate it for three days, and the laundry basket stayed low for a long time, but then came the day when I opened your closet and smelled you, and an ache sprang from my belly, arced over my head, splashed to my feet and drenched me with yearning. But you returned too soon. I was ready. But not ready. Don’t misunderstand me: I wanted you, but not your physical-ness, and now you are here, again, asking me to share the blanket and clear your end of the table, which had been taken over with stuff, books and newspapers and things bought but not yet put away. Happily, I return the space that you’d temporarily vacated, but still. I wanted a bit more time with the ache, you see, to touch it, bathe it, to get reacquainted with the me that isn’t you.