When She is Almost There

Sometimes… sometimes….

There are days when she is almost there. There are days when he can reach out and feel her under his hand. Days when he turns to her and begins to tell her of his thoughts; only to see that the chair he turned to, the space in the kitchen where she stood, her side of the bed, is empty.

There are nights when he, half-asleep, rolls over in that big bed to wrap his arms around her, feel the warmth of her sleeping form against him… and finds only emptiness.

She was here… and now she is gone.

He walks down by the river each morning, leaving a space for her at his side, stepping back with the gate open in his hand for her to walk through. There is only him though and now the paths seem empty, the winter made harsher by her absence.

The wind is colder, the leafless trees more desolate, the mornings darker and the evenings lost in shadows of regret now that she is gone and he will never touch her again. That is unless he is wrong and there is another life that comes where he will see her again, when he too is dead.