It’s been 8 weeks since I smelt his hair, since I felt his breathe on my neck, since we made love. 8, long, anguishing weeks. That feel even longer when I realised I will never see him again in flesh. The though brings a hard lump to my throat and a cold sweet to my brow. It’s almost unbearable, but inevitable.

8 weeks that has suddenly accelerated into 10. In between errands, walking dogs, hanging washing doing the dishes. And as each moon waxes, the messages wane.

It is tearing me apart, anxiety, stress, and grief, love… nowhere to put it… nowhere to go. Depression a mist. Dulling my senses, bringing panic, fear, loss, everything but relief.

The first few days after I left were blissful agony, the triumph of having discovered love, not yet defeated by having lost it. Hope like a beacon, a magnetic slow movement of magma towards the beating drum of his heart. A heat beating for me.

We spoke under the covers, 10,000km apart. Feeling the soft warm folds of our bodies, that was once enmeshed. Delicate sighs, soft muttered words, and guttural groans. The climax so sweet, followed by the wave of crisis. The realisation that his flesh will never enter mine, his tongue will never lick the hard erotic moons of my breasts.

Occasionally glimmers of his face in my imaginations, but easier to remember dismembered parts… like a mirage, unable to focus and see the full image.

“I’ll meet you in Zanzibar,” I promise without conviction.

The image of the last man I loved also eventually faded under the relentless beating of grandfather sun.

I grieve that I will inevitably move on. That I left too soon. That I naively thought that time would stand this time, for this love, because I couldn’t bear to move on again. To stop loving again.

10 weeks now 12. The text messages now the occasional siren in the darkness of the night. Yearning replaced by a cold sense of dread, another night spent with aching eyes on the Internet.

When 12 becomes 14 there are days that I have forgotten to forget, where I genuinely have a moment of relief followed by regret. I don’t want to be ok. I don’t want to have moved on. I want the sweet recklessness of our love, the excitement of your calls, the fierce storm of your desire.

What I have is these thoughts. Thoughts about distance, thoughts about future, thoughts about thought distance. These thoughts are always near.