what I miss after 8 years of divorce and 14 years of marriage is sleeping with a warm body not you but anyone after you fill the U-Haul and are surprised because you think that I am the packrat and all the stuff is mine but you have a piano and bicyles and a motorcycle and clothes and music and books and really you are one too, it’s just that I am worse and you drive away and I can’t sleep though really it did start before then we did over a year of couselling and I slept alone some and then kick you out and sleep alone more our daughter moves into the room across the hall up from the basement when you leave and in the middle of the night she comes up with me because you are gone to Colorado and now 6 years later she asks about it and I say you came in with me and she says she didn’t know that and would wonder why I would steal her in the middle of the night and I say I didn’t but as she is older and moves back two flights down to have that distance that one needs from a parent when one is in puberty and growing up and away and I wake at four am and now that same sex marriages are legal I wonder about buying an asian bride and then I would have a body a warm body to sleep with but it wouldn’t work and yes I miss sex too but not in the same way it’s the warm breath and heartbeat and movements and I am the monkey longing for a mother to cling to and I too make do with a pillow I could make a scarecrow for my bed a body not an inflatable too cold but something warm and I could put a watch in its chest an old one that ticked it doesn’t actually help to be in love because I am not sleeping with my love and that makes it all the worse I long for a warm body really no I long for my warm love this particular body and breath and heartbeat and I wake often longing for my warm love

the picture is my sister, who died in 2012 of breast cancer. I made her stuffed animals and puppets for years starting when we were little. I made the red eared puppet and bought her the puppet with legs that year….