I took your words and placed them under my pillow for some lonely night.
Now with the distant stars as witness I’ll draw them out into the light,
and together we will inspect them, study them, dissect them,
and I’ll recall to mind how you’re less eloquent under close scrutiny,
while on some sailboat far away you threaten the empty air with mutiny.

Stranger, and stranger still, these lines haunt me like some midnight ghost,
all hollowed out and pining for something like the warmth they fear the most.
And it repeatedly astounds me, how when I’m lost like this they ground me,
burrowed beneath the seabed and pulling the waves like blankets around me,
tucking your words back under my pillow for the next time I’m feeling lonely.
There’s nothing quite like the wind whistling through their empty hollows,
and I can remember clearly once again why when you left I didn’t follow.