I filled my mouth with answers of you:

your whereabouts,

your recent girlfriends.

They commanded these responses from me,

without stopping to

acknowledge that I may not know the answers, either, that I was just as afraid of losing you, and that you had left one cold, blue morning while the birds pecked apart the morning silence with their practiced melodies. I am not one for leaving lovers half-frozen in bed, one leg draped over the mattress--this one eager to leave, to urge you to stay--and the other leg, still warm with a long sleep, desperate to never abandon its safe place beneath the thick sheets, inside the small home.