I can’t tell if I miss you or if I simply miss a feeling. A flutter when my phone lit up and I thought it might be you. A warm surge from my heart to my hips as I set the music and lit the candles, waiting for the first sign of you in the drive. A longing for all the romantic gestures you rarely made.

But I held out. I just knew. I could sense a softer you buried beneath the aloof and often distant man you presented. I felt it in these fleeting moments that I’d capture up and collect in a jar, like fireflies at dusk.

The time you made me a ring from a tree branch while eating sandwiches on the parkway. That day you taped my feet together after fixing the hot water heater then ran out the front door laughing. The little half-smirk you’d make when I said something you found absurd. That way you pinned my leg to the side as you firmly thrust yourself deep inside me.

And yet, I don’t know as I sit here alone now with my little jar of moments, whether I made it all up. Was my desire so heavy that I smushed all those flickering warm feelings down into a paste, spread it thick amongst the distance between us, smeared the glowing mush into every wanting and aching pocket of time, prolonging the inevitable.

Why did I do that? Do you have a jar? Are you holding it right now, wondering why we couldn’t just live more softly? Move and morph with it, even in the darkest dark. Especially then.

That’s all I wanted. Not to be held at arm’s length where you so often kept me. Just close enough to allow our collective light to burn.