Tim Huijts

My fingers feel the pulse of your words, your page sighs as I turn it, your spine settles in my hands; and in my gaze you come to life, my eyes delighting in you, my soul breathing as it reads you, finding itself.

I stroke the midnightblue smudge of your ink, my thumb tracing the brush of your hand, the paper still exhaling your wrist, and close my eyes to feel you in the dark, the room rolling on the tide of your breathing; I smile and whisper: they have a need beyond need, our souls; one candle, two flames.

Dance free, soul of souls, by the shore of my breathing, through closed eyes I see you, my pulse feels your pace; pour out for me, raise your waves, steep me in you, swirl my humming to words with the hem of your dress, quench my gale with the sway of one whisper.

"My destiny has been that I remember and must weave together, must plait into one cable the many threads, the thin, the thick, the broken, the enduring of our long history, of our tumultuous and varied day.”
Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Not a day without remembering you. Not one.

"Because for the first time in years, his whole life, perhaps, Henry doesn't feel cursed at all. For the first time, he feels seen.”
V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

"How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly.”
-Virginia Woolf, The Waves

I carry it with me, this quiet image, through the din of trains and corridors, through rain-thrashed cobbled alleys: your thumb lingering on the page's fresh cut, your fingertips fragrant with coffee and paper, new old words eye-stroked, breath-caressed; your hand, and mine near.

into the blue

I understand. Yes, I remembered. I always do; I always will. And yes, the ache of missing is there, very much, and always will be. You do exist. And so do I. Thank you, too. Still. Always.

And words even, words that I knew, and still want to know, as soul-deep. I lost half of me, and I know I did that myself; but more so, it felt that I lost the understanding, the knowing, of this half I lost. And now, here, I see this half of me, but don't know if it really exists.

I don't know what it really meant. It's not about blame; I would understand the bits and pieces of it. It just made me question everything I thought I knew: this complete knowing, understanding, this being home and whole, finally, despite anything, no matter how distant, how seemingly alone;

The silence of songs for other ears, of the call and response of posts, of a 'you' that wasn't me.

photo of a house at dusk, with dark windows on the ground floor showing a warm orange light, and four windows on the first floor brightly reflecting the dusk light in the west.

Megara: 'Wait for worse? You love the light so much?'
Amphitryon: 'I do, I love its hopes.'
–Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
#BookWormSat

Why can't I shake the sense that perhaps words are only skin-deep, tattoos turned to ashes in a shiver; my ghosted eyes still asking if they saw, or just imagined, what my heart was blind to.

three people walking the pavement through the fog, past three trees, with several streetlights

'We melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist.'
–Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Every poem I read pretends to be you, mimicking the cadence of your chest, the metre of your breathing, the lick and lilt of your tongue; every poem I write is whispered by your shadow, ink opaquely bleeding as I speak, drawing your outline, enveloping your absence.

When I bare my soul you feel seen. Who did we leave but ourselves?

photo of a park with old defense walls, and a lone person walking in the distance.

'The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence.'
–Edward Thomas, #BOTD (March 3, 1878)

You do live through me; how can you not, when I think of you with every first bittersweet sip, with every spine I stroke, with every page I rustle, with every leaf that falls at my feet.

"Do you know—the only life I am sure of is the life of the Imagination.”
-A.S. Byatt, Possession

Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
-Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House And Other Short Stories

"The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.”
Virginia Woolf, The String Quartet

"I have missed you. I do miss you. I shall miss you. And if you don't believe it, you're a long-eared owl and ass. Lovely phrases?”
-Virginia, Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

"I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way.”
-Vita, Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

"Night had come—night that she loved of all times, night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day.”
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

"Like a little warm coal in my heart burns your saying that you miss me. I miss you oh so much."
-Vita, Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

"He would see her flash her wings.”
-A.S. Byatt, Possession

"Yes, dearest Vita: I do miss you; I think of you: I have a million things, not so much to say, as to sink into you.”
-Virginia, Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

"I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”
-A.S. Byatt, Possession