The Planets Bend Between Us

It's like you're here, but you're not. The room is a mess: clothes strewn everywhere, dirty socks and underwear covering the floor, books and papers and glue sticks and shoes and rumpled blankets littering the beds. But you're not here. The DVD player is hooked up, my pants are off. But you're not here. The feel of you is here but not the smell. The feel of disorder, the feel of not wanting to waste a minute of the little time that we can spend together with cleaning so we leave everything where it falls. The feeling of two people having just walked out of the room, leaving their mess and proof that they were there. That feeling is here. But the smell, your smell, our smell, is absent. The smell of your skin, of body fluids mixing, of your hair mixing with the scent of me that is already present; that smell isn't here. That's how I know that you aren't here, that you never were. That's how I really know that you didn't just walk out to use the bathroom or wash a bowl or go take a phone call down the hall. That's how I know that we won't spend this night together. The feel is here, but not the smell; that's how I really know that I'll spend another sleepless night alone.