The ghost of your lips along my back still wakes me in the morning.

I feel the whispers of your scarred hands in my hair,
bloodied dirty nails scratching so gently against my scalp as I read.

Even in your absence, my shadow recalls sunny days entwined with yours.

I labor every day to remember your face, as time is a thief of such things.

Your nose had a crook in it, the kind that came from being brutally broken once. (You were so coy, maybe a touch proud or even vain, that night you told me it had been broken thrice before – "because no one could ever tell" was the implication we toasted to as it rained outside). There were many a winter evening, when you were particularly tired, that I kissed it in the unruffled shadows of our bed.

We had similar hair, though yours always seemed a touch iridescent, not unlike a raven's feathers; you liked how mine was softer. I recall fondly you loved to brush it – but I think, in hindsight, perhaps you knew I didn’t, with how it tangled and hang so heavy as to make me head sore. (It was your idea to cut it and now I do not know if I could bare to let it grow out again).

I was taller than you, though you were assuredly stronger. I think, sometimes, you liked making me work for those simple kisses and gentle brushes of the forehead – you were always on the move, so much faster than myself, that it took effort to make you still long enough for me to lean down for such innocent intimacies. such a nuisance you were, proudly so, I still believe you enjoyed the vexation it caused me, to work for the affections you normally gave so easily maybe you enjoyed being the center of attention, being chased

surely, in a world where I care for so little, my actions spoke loudly for the affections that never came to life on my tongue