So many times throughout each day, I imagine it.
I see you walking towards me outside, or coming in the apartment door. I run to you. I am crying. I touch you to see that you are real. I smell you and look deeply into your eyes while shaking my head slightly in disbelief. I tell you how hard it has been for me. How surreal and how wrong. I grasp you tightly in my arms and hold the material of your T-shirt hanging over your back tightly in between my fingers. I do not let go.
But in this vision, you are smiling but stoic. You show no real emotion because you are not real. I am real sitting at the kitchen table or on a bench in front of our building, or on the curb or on the couch or the bed.
It's not just that I've lost you. It's that I am constantly, all day, losing you.