While You're Gone

While you're gone, working shirted or shirtless, teaching and straining and building somebody else's big idea, think of me.

Think of the sex we had last night, the way we sat naked and faced each other and touched. Think of how you rubbed sore muscles even sorer, because my eyes went wide. Think of you in me, deep and sweet. Think please of how much I had been needing that.

While you're gone think of me naked, think of me in sunlight, think of me stretching by body. As you sweat think of other sweat, my sweat, our sweat. Think of me tied and tortured, think of me high and torturing. Just think of me.

I am aimless and busy. I have so much to do, and I do it or I don't and I can hardly even tell which. My head is full of fog, and I think of you. I think of you not so far away, but working and thinking beyond my reach.

I do not think I am in your thoughts, so much as problems and solutions, nuts and bolts and washers of all different sizes, wood and chain and concrete and mud and water.

My thoughts as well are full of names and faces, people and dates and the thousand things I must and maybe cannot do. And books. And papers. And ceremonies.

Come back to me with a smile, strain against brevity, hold me. Come back to me joyful to see my face, grateful to feel my body. Come back to me and when you are here with me be here with me, not there, not with the work. And I will let my troubles go, for you.

I did not expect this to be such a time of absence, but expectations lie like carpets and dead leaves. I will be at peace, if while you're gone you think of me, and if when you return to me, you're here.