We Never Made It to Morning

I should listen to that voice.
The one echoing back from someplace I almost remember.
It reverberates low and without restraint –
folded into this moment,
so close it feels like a memory I forgot to hold onto.
Or maybe it’s a dream I woke from too soon.

Was it home?
Not a place, but her.
The way her smile opened wide and unrestrained —
like sunlight willing to beg for forgiveness
rather than ask for permission that might never come.
I saw it once (that smile), maybe a thousand times —
but its image lingers within a moment just beyond my reach.
Is that my memory fading,
or me, drifting with the years?
Why can’t I hold it still?
Fuck, was that home?

God.
I need to breathe.
Breathe, brother.
Breathe.

There’s something I left behind —
just beyond the horizon,
out where the light bends and my memory breaks.
I can almost see it, taste it, the moisture from her lips.
Fuck.
Why can’t I breathe?

MH ~

“I feel like once you know someone is there for you, and once you know they love you, you never actually think of them again ~“

Marie from the movie “Malcom & Marie” 2021