and i never thought id say
I love to see you listen to sad music
its how i know that you’re okay
im not checking in with you
We’re both going at our own pace
but is it strange to say
dont go too far away?

i strum on my guitar
you used to sing with me
but that was before –
and now i sing alone
puzzle at my thoughts like those crosswords we used to do together on the metro.

This separate life,
in a strange new form of home,
empty bedsheets, your contact no longer appearing when I share something on my phone.
the smallest things that convey your slow extraction, your exit, surgical removal from my life.

forceps at the ready,
lying splayed and open on the table
tears fill and fall,
I watch them remove you
And still I say
‘ Take it all, take it all’.