"Missing You in My Own Way"

You're off to Texas
and normally I would feel relief (even secret joy)
at all the space and time and solitude
allotted to me,
the girlfriend left behind.

But there's a quiet mistake
when I go to the usual places,
the coffee shop
the bookstore
the park;
something is brilliantly wrong
with my empty demitasse.

And the house!
A freakish dream
of ghosts and shadows
that arrived the day you left,
reducing me to a nervous widow
confiding in the dog.

These are placid, long days
with you off to Texas
and me in our lonely house
trying to keep up the garden
and dishes and clutter control,
my mind cramping with books
and useless television.

Drifting and wondering
about inane things,
suspended in a blackhole
two mere feet off the ground,
lost in a feeling
without a name.

When you call at 9am,
asking 'how are you'
and 'what are you up to'
I can't push out the words
that I hate your absence.

I'm just drifting and wondering,
lost in a feeling,
fiddling with poems
and notes on the keyboard,
and missing you
in my own way.