A love letter I should have written...

I spend most of my time with my eyes shut, dreaming of you - lovely little cameos of you flitting past, and full-length feature films. I remember things you said, and sweet things you did. I can spend hours like this - eating lotuses, smelling poppies - hours I can hardly believe have passed.

I went to a concert tonight, but the music heightened my emotion to such a fever pitch that I had to leave, and go to a bar. A bad idea: everybody was there with their lover. Only I was alone, a solitary Adam before the creation of Eve. Except I wasn't in paradise. Far from it. I caught your reflection in the mirror. Even the beer bubbled with your humor, the way your face lights up when you laugh. The bar was haunted by you - I had to leave.

When I got home, I sat for a long time in the dark, wanting you, thinking hollow thoughts, containing only your absence. There must be more empty space in my head than I ever thought. I am going to bed now, so I can dream of you.

To make sure I do, the last thing I'll do is kiss your picture, and wrap my empty arms around the idea of you, and fall fast asleep. Holding onto my fantasy of you, I'll feel that with each breath something leaves me, and goes to you. And there I'll conjure up your face across a candlelit table, holding hands walking down a street in Barcelona at midnight, your wet skin pressing against mine on an abandoned beach in Haiti. In my dreams we are the lovers that others gaze on enviously.

Why are our pleasures so short and interrupted, and our absenses so long and unbroken?