The Ache of Loss
2012-07-23, 11:02 p.m.

ghosts of him lurk at the edges of my consciousness. in a song we loved last summer playing in the beauty supply store. in our names carved into concrete, graffiti he scrawled on a payphone. sometimes the pain of the loss comes more concretely, like when i see his new girlfriend sitting across from me on the train. she's coming from brooklyn, i'm from uptown going farther uptown and somehow we're sitting across from one another and she doesn't know who i am. i see her walk to his house while i walk to mass. she's standing outside in tiny shorts and long straight hair, where i used to stand waiting for him.

but he's not the him he was. and i'm not me. he's not on his meds, just tying up loose ends, filling the ever emptying cup of lust while I look longingly at her one last time, turning on my heels to feel the ache of need with God. Remembering that he called me 12 hours before, begging me to come over so he could kiss me until dawn. Drugged on Benedryl I asked about meds, said I missed our tree, our walks, our weekly trips to mass. He wanted none of that. He said he wanted kisses, but of course he wanted more.

I'm detached, painfully divorced from all those needs that pulled me between two men. The Capricorn has no idea, he never even calls me. He wouldn't want to hear about it anyway. We only text. I only study. Trying to fill my emptying cup with the word, trying to rid myself of his ghostly presence, cloying, lying like a demon. In my mind he is the same hazel eyed gentleman who laid his heart bare for me. But in reality he is not. Not free to go to mass because he is "dog sitting." Her. On his bed. A new puppy.