Ellipsis

photo: Michael Van Essen

The Germans

must have a word for it.

The sensation of missing someone

whom you are with,

anticipating the longing

you will soon feel

when they depart.

“I miss you already,” we say,

as if this makes any sense.

We regularly steal from the future

to feed our present tense,

our secret addiction to the holograph

of someone

over his flesh and bone.

The man next to us in bed

is never as perfect

as the one in our head.

No wonder great loves

of the past

made their nest

from letters.

Ink as the quantum reality

of absence and presence

simultaneously.

What sweet succor comes with age,

if you are lucky.

These days,

I am perpetually late to anticipation.

Nostalgia, finally, a thing of the past.