Sometimes.... when it's long past midnight and I reach across an empty bed to find you are not there, once again, I let my mind wander to a place I know it should never go.

Not anymore.

Not since that door closed and the windows were boarded up and the storm that ravaged my insignificant life climaxed, leaving behind it downed gutters and overturned trees and droplets of buried hope.

Sometimes when it's long past midnight and my tear-stained pillow is gripped tightly between clenched fingertips, I let my heart wander to the what could have been's

What would my life have turned into if grief didn't knock on that bolted door and turn me into a hollow ghost of myself

A shell of the woman I was once becoming by your side

Would I have let you in to the deepest recesses of my fragile mind -a buried fortress built deep within me for my fears to hide
...