I feel you most in the containers that used to hold your things, spaces I intended to fill but remain empty,
waiting.
I find the hair from your knuckles tucked away in the coat closet, your shoulder blades in the boxes that used to hold hats. The fibers of your lungs are stored among 2011 tax returns and your cheekbones have taken up residence right next to the glasses on the top shelf. There is not a speck of my life that isn’t saturated with you—I taste your lips instead of wine, feel your fingers reaching further down my spine as my hair grows.
I catch myself holding my breath. You sneak in through the cracks in things, through the crates of coats and old dishes that I’ve moved to the basement, through the dust that grows ever thicker on my kitchen floor; dust that I run between my fingers until it becomes indiscernible from my skin,
until I am full of you again,
so full that each exhale means I might lose you completely,
might become yet another empty container,
the one that held your heart.