Triskaidekaphobia.

Aligned, perfectly, like your bottom row of crooked teeth, I want these letters
arranged for you and you only. I want these words to remind you
of honey dripping from the leaves, tiny splashes of gold like the gold
in your eyes, Precious, so precious they are to me. These sentences should
race each other like the beats of my heart when I see your
face, should build and stretch until they bridge the distance between us, until
they lead me home to you. I want these paragraphs to lens time,
to move mountains, to obliterate the walls we've constructed. But it's not to
be. I cannot bend the language to my will, cannot make it do
my bidding, make it drag you back to my bed by the hair.

I fell asleep for hours last night, dreamed that I married the only
man I've ever said I'd marry. There were ladybirds in our garden, swarms
of them, and as we walked hand in hand we counted them one
by one among the dense forest of strelitzia. I slept through my alarm
and woke up startled, the swiftly dissipating contentment still battling with the shroud
of despair that has swaddled me for far too many months. I refuse
to believe that you are the only way out of this straitjacket, but
I can't feel what is in my heart, so so still it is.

I woke up with your ghost in my bed, with your ghostly breath
still in my hair. I woke up and for a second remembered what
it felt like to live. I woke up, and almost wished I hadn't.