Plucked

 

Goddamn have I missed you.

Not in a distance or sequence kind of way...but in a lost-limb type of absence...a bottom of a glass reaction to a memory that had once filled it completely.  

I breathe you in, the scent of a city in its sweat-stained summer'd past, with the first tendrils of Fall starting to spill into the mornings, a coolness along the avenues that rides on breezes that brush past you like strangers on a sidewalk.

I taste you, the air of you...the inhalation of streets and windows where pasta boils on a stove and street-vendors mix concoctions and the mix of scents is distinctly yours...

I remember a tub, filled to the brim with warming waters...a delicate step into it and a leg sliding past the surface...a spill of water onto the tile as I joined...the skin upon skin and the steam blurring your face slightly and your hair turning darker in the water...the tendrils turning like leaves in the Fall.

I remember the faces of strangers, figures and stares, laughter and aloofness...worries and doubt at times, complete joy at times...a mix, a cacophony of noises and reactions to a city with labored breathing.

I try but completely fail at conjuring up you in my mind...I cannot quite get the fullness of you in person, the sound of your quiet voice, the darkness of your eyes, the warmth from just being in the same place as you, the pull of gravity keeping me from looming over you, the ache of a distance and the memory failing to remember, to replace...so I get pieces, shards and fragments that pierce my memory and I gather them like a puzzle pushed onto the floor, disconnected and misshaped.   

Until I see you again.

And then, as if I am plucked from the very part of where I was I return.  We return.

And the parts of me that fit the parts of you find themselves familiar again.

And surrounded by millions of people we don't even notice them.  Because you are enough for me to capture and keep in a singular lens, plucked from the others to rest my gaze and fold into me.