There’s a specific kind of sad that’s different from grief —
it’s not the heavy, permanent sadness,
it’s the lighter, sharper one that comes and goes:
missing someone who’s coming back.
You’re in it and you know it’s temporary
and knowing it’s temporary doesn’t help that much —
you still feel the specific absence of the specific person,
their specific weight not where it usually is.
The specific sadness of missing you is almost pleasant —
because it’s proof of something, proof of the full amount,
proof that you have gotten so deep into a person
that their absence registers in the body, not just the mind.
The specific sadness of missing you is the cost
of having built something that requires two people —
a life-shaped thing that goes lopsided without you,
that rights itself when you come back through the door.
Three days, this time. A conference, unreachable hours.
The specific way the apartment doesn’t process her absence —
it just holds the fact of it without acknowledging the fact —
all her things exactly where she left them, neutral.
The coat again, the shoes, the shampoo —
I’ve been through this before, I know the inventory —
the things she leaves that make her absence present
instead of making it easier by making it clean.
I miss her in the way that reveals the apparatus —
the way a power outage reveals how much runs on power.
Everything I don’t have to think about when she’s here
becomes visible in her absence, suddenly effortful —
the coordination of the day, the shape of the evening,
the question of what to do with the dinner hour —
all of it requiring decision when it usually just happens,
the shared life doing the work I don’t have to do alone.
She’ll come back smelling like a different hotel room —
the specific smell of somewhere that isn’t home —
and I’ll notice it and not say anything,
and within an hour it’ll be replaced by the apartment.
The apartment reclaims her quickly, which I love —
the familiar air, the familiar light —
and she reclaims the apartment just as fast,
her coat on the hook, the shoes finding their place.
I’ve learned to be useful with the missing —
to let it tell me something instead of just sitting in it.
What it tells me, every time, is the specific amount —
the precise degree of necessity she’s become.
And that’s worth knowing, worth the three days of absence —
worth the lopsided apartment and the bad sleep —
because coming out the other side of the missing
with the measurement confirmed is its own kind of good.