I read a lot today. Something caught my eye, and I began thinking about it.

The human hand has 27 bones. I looked at my hand and smirked, strangely.

The human hand has 27 bones, and each of mine misses each of yours.

It’s such a simple yet beautiful feeling. Your hand is mine. When I warm them within my hands, when I hold them to pull you closer to me. When I hold them on the street to (sternly) guide you in the right direction. When I lock both of them with one of mine. Without your hand in mine, it feels as though they are incomplete—fragile. This house feels the same—empty walls that echo the absence of your laughter, our silly jokes, our love shouts, and our wake-up calls.

I mentioned how everything is oddly silent, eerily quiet. A quietness that stretches too wide, like a hollow I can’t fill. I keep reaching for your presence out of habit. It’s a muscle memory now to call your name, or one of your names that I call you. To ask you to throw something from upstairs, to look at this jug and want to fill it up for you, to pick up the card deck and throw all the chips around, and settle the scores.

All I find is the ache of missing you. I keep the lights off most of the time. They don’t serve any purpose anymore now that the light of my heart has gone so away. To think of it, my heart feels like a lonely room, just like the one I am sitting in right now, whose corners dim without your warmth to light them. I miss you, not just in moments but in every breath, every thought, every quiet second.

Come back soon, my love, because only you can make the room of my heart whole again. Come back. Come back and make me whole.