Reams of yearning

Your hands, they are what your letters first bring to mind.

Your hands, those fingers locked with mine for a stolen moment or two.

Your hands, the pressure of them on the paper, on my body, in my hair.

These letters... I hold them up and take a deep breath

hoping for a heady whiff of you, thinking of you in that moment, 

at your desk, leaning into the light of the lamp.

Or could it have been written as the warm rays of the sun

fell on you through that bay window you send me pictures of?

I like to imagine you writing during cold nights, the unbearable loneliness

driving you into my arms, open for you, many miles away.

Your hand, now,

the almost calligraphic letters curving into each other,

like us spooning on that rainy night of long ago.

You write words I read over and over again.

Some of these words you once mumbled hoarsely

into my ear, half-asleep.

I read them, and I imagine hearing them

in your throaty whisper all over again.

If there must be spaces in our togetherness,

let's fill them with reams of yearning,

of conversations never-ending,

of everything and nothing,

of the momentous and the meaningless.

These letters, now smeared with my scents as well,

fraying at the edges, silent and eloquent,

they take your place in my bed.