Distance 🗾
I miss you...
No, scratch that...
I am becoming a little unreasonable about missing you.
Because there are moments when your name lights up my phone and my whole body answers before I do...
like somewhere beneath skin and bone, I have already learned the sound of you coming home.
And then the call ends...
and suddenly this room feels too large.
The bed feels like an exiled sentence.
My hands don't know where to go...
so they reach for the memory of you instead.
I know the distance between us is measured in kilometres,
time zones,
bad connections and that little spinning circle that appears when the universe decides I have had enough of you for tonight...
but my body doesn't understand geography.
It only knows that your voice can still make my chest tighten.
That one laugh of yours...
God.
That laugh has become a kind of contraband in my bloodstream.
I replay it when I shouldn't.
I hear it when I'm supposed to be working.
I find myself smiling at nothing because somewhere in my mind, you are still saying my name...
and I am still turning toward you.
I want you...
but even that feels insufficient.
I want the ordinary things that distance has made obscene.
Your feet finding mine underneath the blankets.
Your head on my chest while I pretend I'm listening to the movie.
Your hand reaching for mine without either of us having to think about it.
I want to kiss you hello...
and then forget that hello was supposed to be the beginning of a conversation.
I want to pull you closer just because I can.
No screen.
No headphones.
No countdown to goodbye...
just you.
Warm.
Breathing.
Here.
Sometimes I wonder if obsession is simply love with nowhere to put its hands...
because what else do you call this?
Knowing the exact softness of your voice when you're tired.
Knowing when your “I'm fine” isn't fine.
Knowing which silence means you're thinking and which one means you want me to stay on the phone a little longer...
and still wanting more.
Always more.
I want to learn you without the distance translating everything first.
I want to discover every little place where you like to be held...
every expression that crosses your face when you realize I am looking at you...
every shy little smile you try to hide when you know exactly what you're doing to me.
I want slow mornings with you.
Breakfast going cold because morning sex after steamy showers became more important.
Your hair refusing to cooperate.
My arms refusing to let you leave the bed.
Music low in the background...
your fingers tracing lazy patterns across my skin...
and that look.
That dangerous siren look that says neither of us is particularly interested in behaving.
I want the kind of intimacy that doesn't need an occasion.
A forehead kiss while you're making tea.
My hand finding your waist when I walk past.
A back hug while you're pretending to be annoyed.
Your perfume staying on my shirt long after you've exited the room...
so I can bury my face in it and pretend distance hasn't won again.
Because that's the thing about wanting you...
it has become a ritual.
I carry you into mornings.
I carry you through crowded rooms.
I carry you into the quiet hours when everyone else has disappeared and my mind decides that midnight is the perfect time to remind me exactly how your body feels against mine...
or how I imagine it might.
And maybe that's what scares me...
how easily imagination has learned your shape.
How a voice note can become a heartbeat.
How a photograph ...my days the photographs ....can become an ache...a forbidden longing....
How closing my eyes can turn this empty room into somewhere you are standing three inches away from me...
close enough to touch...
but still impossibly far.
I don't want forever to be something we keep promising each other through a screen.
I want to wake up one morning and reach for you...
and find you.
No loading.
No “can you hear me?”
No goodnight whispered into a microphone because the person I want to whisper it against is somewhere else...
just your breath beside mine.
Your fingers tangled with mine.
Your sleepy eyes opening...
and that smile.
That damn smile.
The one that makes all this waiting feel like it had a reason.
Until then...
I will keep loving you across the distance.
A little recklessly.
A little obsessively.
Maybe more than I should...
but exactly as much as I do.
Because I don't merely want to be the man you love when the call connects...
I want to be the man your heart recognizes when the distance finally disappears.
And when that day comes...
don't expect me to act normal.
I've spent too long missing you.