b sharp minor

I love you with my feet, glued to the ground where we walked together for two short years, ever returning by chance to the red clay where our love first lived. I love you with my toes, curling out from under the edge of the blanket especially when you kissed me, curling back and arching like me next to you, where I love you with my skin, the largest organ, greater than my heart because it remembers you every time I lie, lying under someone else, and my heart only remembers you in how fast it beat the first time I touched yours, terrified, white under the moon. I love you with my legs, the way you said they were sexy whether I shaved the stubble or not, the way they stuck to the seat in your mom’s minivan in the drenched air of August when we sat in the park that one time together, that time that should have been the first of many, that time when you were already planning our anniversary, that time that was not meant to be. I love you with my waist and the feeling of your hands on it the first time we danced together, the way I pretended to be okay, the way I cried to you that night but couldn’t form the words to explain why, the night that made me realize I was in love with you even though I wouldn’t tell you so for four more long months. I love you with my hands, forever in your soft brown hair, forever reaching across the quarantine line when you had the flu and I was sure my symptomless sickness was the same but I couldn’t tell the nurse that because then she might have known and it was difficult enough to love you on that ground, it was so difficult that the bittersweet secrecy had perks that I didn’t want to throw away even though I missed you already. I love you with my voice, that wrote you songs, that still writes you songs, that sang “500 Miles” while crying alone in your college dorm room a week before we spoke our love aloud for the last time. I love you with my eyes, that remember the mirror of yours, that remember everything, crying for far too long, crying after I had stopped loving you but when I had still not stopped loving altogether, that will keep crying for love even though you have ceased to be you and I have ceased to be I. I love you with my mouth, hurting with the energy of holding back tears, hurting with the stumbles of my tongue when my loving voice was not enough to hold onto you, my mouth hurting with desperate efforts to replace you that left me bruised and hollow. I love you with my fury that your car was in the shop the one time we were close enough to touch again, if only over coffee, if only like people grown, because maybe it would have helped me stop looking for a replacement for you. I love you because I know no other way to love, and because new-me knows no way to live but to look for new-you, the rebirth of love in new bodies and places that will finally fill the pit that dropped in my stomach two and a half long years ago. I love you with everything I have that nobody is prepared to hold, and I love you in warmth and security that all the hurt I own is finite because you no longer exist, past love of mine.