The slow dying in absence

There is a peace lily wilting in the corner.  Dying in the midst of its verdant leaves.  Its my grandmother's and I must keep it alive.  Its her last green thing.  I feel stretched taut beside its presence.  We pass by each other not seeing each other.  I look past it.  My edges are fraying privately.  Peeling off strand by strand.  And I don't share this splintering with the green plant.  It wilts on its own, in its own reverie, its own memories of her hands, her room, her bronze watering can, the bergamot scent of her tea.

I can't sleep, even though when I close my eyes and then open them it's morning.  And I am not fully awake because I have to will myself to be in the speaking and the doing of the everyday.  I am all future and all past.  I am the last moment and the anticipation of the moment to come.  But the present is abject.  Because the present is the parched plant.  The cognition of the pain of loss.  The dull ache of the separation.  The hopelessness of the emptiness of a desire.  Its shameful really.  Its a vanity, to be so unsatisfied with this moment.  Blue skies, chirping birds who cannot think of desire delayed, only flitting from present to present, the worm, the insect, the ant, the flick of a leaf.  I am an Empress of Moments, so sated, and so petulant, nothing else will do but the gratification of that desire that by the arrangment of the stars, cannot be, not for all the gold, in the right now moment.  And so it manifests itself as a tangible shooting pain, in the lung, in the small of the back, at the back of the throat; a restlessness, a darkness, an absconding from the horror of the reality of it not being present.  And what is the shape of this desire?  In the strength of my desire his shape is set, I imagine his words and glances and looks but can I even predict that the alchemical reaction that is ours will be as my memories and my anticipations paint it?  What if he may slip by, look through, god forbid he should misunderstand my urgency, or fail to see, overlook my anxieties, dismiss my phantom pains that have built into a fortress of tumult.  And all this power he has over my fragile substance held so precariously so that even a puff of wind will disperse it to the nothingness that I secretly fear.  This is consciousness and sentience at its most scandalous; making us vulnerable to a multitude of small deaths.