Good night.

The kitchen lights hung red it and glowing, as if I sat in the glare of two taillights, always reminding me of what was receding. The cars where tired lovers leave you perched on the empty front steps steeped in the red light of a departure, until they turn a corner and the swollen dark consumes you. And you turn keys into ever blacker halls that blind you,
until you flick on the red glowing lights and sit.

Silence crawls through me and settles in my mind as I bathe in the glow of the burning goodbye that burns me to ash when the light fades.
And I sit.
No matter how bright the day had been, the nights are always dark, no light from your sun to guide me; only a sliver of moon peeking out from behind the solid distance between us.
In the hum of the taillights I can still hear your laughter. Like liquor dancing through my veins, like wildflowers, wildfires, live wires. Infecting me with the electricity of the sound, scraping mortar into the cracks where I broke down under the impossible weight of separation, pouring cement to rebuild my foundation after your earthquake hit. And I'm not saying that we shook cities to the ground. Those rumbles were just the sound of two solid masses moving farther apart. And though the distance was nothing more than a week, it weakened me. Ripped the seams I'd sewn tight between us and I fell apart. But above all, I missed your laughter. A lullaby that lays my weary heart to rest. The way the corners of your eyes crease at the corners as you try to hold it in, before you tilt your head back and let it loose. Bathes me in a rich flow of contentment

And I can still hear it echoing through my emptiness and I sit in the red glow of my kitchen.