To become a muse...

So now you’re gone again and I have nothing to show for it. I search for one of your hairs in my sheets, but have no luck at it. No one even knows the fable of our summer in bed and therefore there is no shoulder to make wet. I search for a note or a piece of clothing. Maybe something fell behind the bed, but I still find nothing to properly torture myself with. I think of the days to come and the dying songbirds that will fall from my dark purple valve. It feels as if a large gold clock has been heaved onto my shoulders ticking loudly in my ear like a machine that’s gears are missing rusted metal rubbing against rusted metal mocking my impatience. I’ll play happy music and move my legs quickly for three miles to provoke whatever endorphins I can muster to force the puckered brow from my face, but behind my eyes there are only gray skies to fill my life as I trudge through this beige wallpapered existence. But then I start to feel it rising in the side of my neck. A slight soreness is developing as I remember your cough while fluid drains from my ear swelling the skin below my chin. Like a young boy’s love for the torn laces of his baseball, like the hallow shaft-like stomach of a starved model, like a torn petal of a peony or the finch’s wounded wing it stings to the touch as I press it again and again. The virus will grow and wrap around my throat and I will not nurture it like a drop of water on a dry and brown piece of grass. I will not tend to it with corn syrup soaked candies or warm spiced teas, but instead stand in the chilled wind without insulation, throw away my vitamins, and lay on the pillow you slept and breathed your beautiful little green and blue dancers of bacteria on. With my chipped teeth and crooked smile I greet all that is left of you here and help it weaken my cold shoulder and warm my organs.