Today

*Pardon this digression from my usual fiction, but it was pressing me, and I had to let it out.

You thought it was just the cold. Perhaps the medicine shivering through your bloodstream made you feel this way.

You feel cracked, fragile, like you could come undone easily. You don't mean 'mentally', you mean physically, as if your skin could unravel right off your bones.

You're subdued today, but you don't take comfort or rest in the slow pace of your heartbeat. You know its not you to feel this way.

You almost ask a man for his number, but you don't, by better judgement, wondering what you would really be calling for.

You want his arms around you, engulfing you in his shadow for hours, days, years. You want to lay your head on his chest, breathe in his cologne, let his heartbeat become yours, because, after all, it is yours.

You want to sigh in sweet relief when he whispers that he'll make it all better. His hug has made it all better.

You felt fatherless today.

You haven't felt this way in a long, long time. You remember always feeling this way years ago, this emptiness that lurked in your heart, causing you to fill your head. Today it was in your stomach, your chest, your throat, but it wouldn't escape through a cough.

You liken it to hearing his voice in the distance, slamming out of the back door, running, following it into an open field -- so many ways to turn, but you're walled in a two-by-two foot block. He's not there, but you heard his voice, so you will wait for him. You sit amongst the weeds, the lilacs, and the daffodils that grow high over your head after time. You wait alone, laying down on a bed of dandelions, not crying out...yet.

You don't want validation; your life speaks for itself. You just want that other piece of the puzzle, a piece not fit in artificially, but the natural bit whose departure has left you breathless since.