Persephone Plummeting

You bought me a book once, full of blank pages and famous lovers’ quotes, to be filled with our own words of love to each other.
They screamed at first, shouting love from the filigree, then whispering hints from the print, and finally, just letting the truth show plainly in pages more blank than filled.
                Our story is in the silence.
                       And the absence.
The story of my loneliness is in the silence around me that only you would notice.
It’s the death of music in my life that surrounds me and speaks volumes
To what a happy humming could once answer to a besotted listener.  (That was you.)
Your absence is told on the nights I wake up after a nightmare, and there is no
‘Everything is okay’ to answer me and cuddle me to sleep.
The tale of our awkwardness is told is the weeks, days, and sometimes months between our talks, which are then marked with long pauses.
Filling up and punctuated with all the things we want to, and will never say.
There is a story to be read in all the pictures of us together,
But the novel is in the time between the pictures, the changes that were evident the next time the camera clicked, the smiles and other looks that were never captured.
I will be reminded of our silence on the day I drive myself home from surgery,
The absence of your ring tone and soothing voice, calling just to check.
Perhaps the silences speak something different to you.
Your time now is filled with long distance phone calls and giggles,
So perhaps you don’t even stop to consider the quiet;
But it sneaks up on me to tell me stories when I least expect it.
I stumble on our story when I don’t want to,
Or maybe I do, because I seem to be the stillest when I am missing you.