Binary Code

So it's been 3 months
Since you left me
And this must be my mandatory
Expected contribution
To the myriad of songs or poems
Or utterances
About life post "You"

I made a conscious decision to remove
Any likeness
Any tangible form you once held
And honestly, the worst
By a mile
Was deleting photos -
Those digital representations
The 0s and 1s arranged so beautifully
That represented what we shared
And what we stood for.
I passed by one of you
Laying on your side
In bed
A close up on your beautiful,
Transcendent face.
It was that face I saw more often than not
In the early morning
When you rose.
It is how I will remember you by.
It was not,
(Full admission here)
Your constant reality,
But you'll go down in my life's story
As that set of eyes
And that smile.

Even that photo
Got the delete button.

Strange how I can feel so much
While looking at a screen,
Looking at 0s and 1s
Arranged so beautifully.
So, post-"you" me:
He's healthy
And getting healthier
I will not usher in my 30s,
A decade where I am supposed to fully ripen as a human,
With the reckless abandon
That I took on for 15 years previous.
I am still twinged with profound sadness
About all that lost potential
All that love that seems to evaporate in this heat.
I arrive at the same conclusion every few days,
Spurned on by a sighting of something Texas,
Or Upper West Side,
Or Los Angeles,
Or the like.
The conclusion of course,
Is that I'm not fine
And I'm not okay
I'm deeply wounded
And any outward development I make
Both physically
And with making new acquaintances
Only points towards an impending date I have
With facing the reality and truth
That I wanted to marry you
And all the necessary changes and adjustments required to so
I wanted babies
And to live that photo -
The 0s and 1s
Arranged so beautifully -
Nearly every morning.
it was surreptitiously taken from me
For reasons I know not yet how to comprehend.
I barrel towards a day of reckoning
And my hope is that I will have progressed,
Lost so much weight
Slept with enough women
Made enough new friends
Captured enough of my spirituality
That I can absorb the sucking chest wound
That was our demise.
I am comforted by the fact
That my concerns now lie in my own well-being
I mean this sincerely:
I don't care how you're doing
And what you're up to
I certainly don't wish you ill-
I don't wish you anything-
Which to me is worse.
I will soon enough have my Reckoning
Where I touch the fire of all the things you burned
And on that day,
You'll have a Conference Call
Or a Staff Lunch
Or a Happy Hour
Or a Memo to Type
It'll be a Tuesday or something -
And I will be Alive
I will experience real and true pain
And I will spit on the scorched earth
As you become an also-ran in my story
Relegated to a singular memory
Of beautiful 0s and 1s
Arranged on a screen
That grows ever foggy.