Inspired by Billie Holiday’s I’ll Be Seeing You
Listen first for best experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDlKb2cBAqU
You’d never hear me were I to scream.
That, I learned through experience:
you haven’t come running yet.
My loudest voice was stuck between my ears:
that's where I choked on your name.
Choked on the memory of you,
choked for the air you took away.
I had to accept
that when I call for you, you don’t hear me.
I had to accept
that just because I’m looking up at the moon, or
just because I’m feeling the breeze,
it doesn’t mean that you are too.
I may have thought I was seeing you
in all of those familiar places,
but I’m starting to think you haven’t been meeting me there:
at that feeling of the sun on my skin,
in front of the moonlit shadows on the wall.
I went to all of those places thinking you might be there:
to the moment right before sleep,
to the smell of rain coming in through a cracked window.
I search those places for you less frequently,
but sometimes still
I can’t help but check to see if you might be there waiting for me.
Beneath the shade, half exposed to a patch of light;
deep in the note of a song.
These are the familiar places
where I hold onto the hope
that I’ll be seeing you.