All I know is this isn’t what it was going to be. The inevitable we saw in the morning fog over rolling green land between the dogwood and gardenia. This isn’t it.

All I know is that your skin is supple paper thin, I wound you with my tongue and intentions. My fingers are wayward, headstrong. I knead bruises into the ache you bear ungainly, distance and disdain dripping from my mouth above you.

All I know is I’m in this gilded darkness, it is beautiful and empty. Shadows limned in gold and my hands have a lonesome kind of loveliness, closing as they do on nothingness and want of you. You.

All I know is you. This vitality, this agony. All I know is the emptiness I’ve carried, sacred vessel of nothing, of void, of life lived in absentia. I smile so well and I know you’re not here, I’ve known your absence all my life.

All I know is I don’t know. I’ve never seen satisfied. I don’t know what forgiveness looks like. I didn’t learn to yield of my own free will and I still don’t know how to back down without tearing holes on the way.

All I know is you’re not home and I don’t know how to find you.