Semaphore

This is your body at rest. A semaphore, my cryptogram.

These are your eyes shut against the gathering dawn, and the gulls crying.

Your face a placid mask, you sleep, a leg flung over mine, my arm pinned under your shoulder.

This still warm sheet your very own shroud of Turin, I roll into your retreating warmth.

I am the forsenic investigator, months later, intrigued. You are my cold case, and I am seeking the traces of me in you.

There is where I lingered by the window. There is my DNA in the carpet. There is the faintest trace of my perfume on the pillow. There is the remainder of the echo of my laughter and yours swirling in a neglected corner of the ceiling. Listen to us, listen to that, that is the sound of me loving you.

I'd like to imagine us a pair of predatory ghosts you and I. Haunting the periphery of our living lives... And then again, it could all be conjecture. Because the truth is, I have missed you all these many months, I have missed the metaphor of the semaphore of you.