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.