And Us

Ice has fallen through the night,
not in inches but in layers thick enough
that you are there
and I am here,
a few tenths of an inch making the roads a death trap.

I miss you.
Not an odd thing to say
but an odd thing to feel in such depth.
I am an introvert,
comfortable in silence and empty places,
a traveler for decades,
always glad to be home again,
but rarely feeling loss or loneliness.

And here we are, mere months in,
and each day apart leaves a hole
that makes no sense to me,
and yet, lived, a new pain, a strange one
that contradicts who I have been.

Marriage they say, changes a person,
but never I expected,
so fundamentally.

The ice still falls.
I count the clicks on the window pane,
each one closer to the afternoon’s thaw,
the roads opened
between there
and here
and us.