when you're gone i sense the lack of you. air fills the place you belong, following me around like a ghost. i lay in bed listening to the rise and fall of our sons breathing. i see their noses and brows outlined in the darkness. they look just like you, i think. you planted them in me and they grew from nothing. they are half you, and yet they cannot fill the hole you've left. i know this journey away is only temporary, but it occurs to me as i try to sleep here in my mother's house that this is my plan for the worst-case-scenario - to live here, sleep here with our sons and sense the lack of you surely more succinctly, more cuttingly than now. i imagine you gone forever and my shoulders shudder and quake with my weeping at the horror of it. it would be so impossible to breathe without you, let alone raise our boys, be strong, continue on. these days apart may be made worse by our struggling of late - the stress of your career on the line, the preschoolian's problems, my inability to dig myself out of myself at times, but it is a great reminder of how deep is our need for one another. this family we have created is a lifeline to the world and all my improbable, horrific imaginings simply underscore that fact, remind me of the strength of this blood that connects us, how important our flesh and our mutual struggle. we are molded of the same thing. we are one. i cannot forget. i love you. come back soon.