The last time I was with you, there were bright lights strung together by our combined breath and we were surrounded by images of blues and greens. Yet, the thing I remember most clearly is how unusually dry your hands were when I held them.

Now, in your absence, the lights have fallen. It seems that the strength of my breath is not enough to sustain the intensity of their glow. The coolness of greens and blues have faded to grey visual drones.

I sleep less now and what dreams I do have deceive me of your dry hands within mine.

You were the one to cajole me out of my silence, to encourage me to claim existence as the mighty declarative sentence. But now, the declarative sentence that once was, your absence has changed. The period that once stamped clearings for my existence became a comma and I anxiously awaited your return. Then, that comma turned into a question mark and that was the end of public declarations.

My hands are empty while your hands are filled with your curled up fingers. I wonder if your hands are dry still.

The journal you once posted is no longer updated and is a quandry to me. Has time stopped? I turn on my computer now, as is in my daily morning routine once I arrive at my office. I click to your journal and the morning news is as always. It is the same story. I had forgotten. Time had stopped.

I wish your hands were clammy again.

I miss blowing warm glows into the frost with you and watching them hover for long moments at a time. When you were with me, it was an effortless deed that came naturally. We used to blow bulbs of brightness into the thinness of air as easily as if we were simply breathing. We strung them together and spaced them out equidistant from each other to mark the timing of our breath. Each a whole note in each bar. We used to breathe in counts of four.

Shallow, my breaths punctuate this score sheet erratically. You were always the one to exhale and so I’m left holding my breath, letting go only when my lungs are distracted by flashing sepia-tinted images, metronomes, and biology.