When I was ten years old, I was glued to our living room tv watching news reports about an airplane that crashed on the coast. 

As I lay in bed that night, 

I could feel the water lapping around me 

my pillow is wet cold sand

death by suffocation 

the loss of precious life. 

I was cold 

cold

cold 

for days after. 

I am nineteen years old and there isn’t a time I pass by that stretch of the ocean without thinking about it. 

I wonder if they are missed. 

What loss was the greatest?

Grandmother, partner, friend?

I am a lover and my hands caress wet hair, as I try to paint back the color to your face. 

I miss the softness of your golden locks underneath my fingertips 

the way your touch was so delicate I would wear it on me 

your auburn eyes, so warm they make my skin glow, Mediterranean.

I feel like I lose parts of my being in that same stretch of water. 

My travel back and forth, 

Beirut then South, 

the South then Beirut, 

is a process of missing.

I’m missing from my parents’ afternoon tea,

I’m here for my aunt’s Sunday morning coffee.

I miss when life was not a compromise between two worlds you love to hate that you begin to disassemble both of their parts trying to fix the other.

So I write love letters to the South-

I hope it writes me back.

I go to bed with Beirut-

I hope I don’t have to wake up alone.

I miss the things that are no longer there

and whenever I come back to hunt them, they’re long gone 

making me miss them more. 

I could almost taste my mother’s honey and lukewarm water but it doesn’t slide down my throat

I could almost feel my lover’s embrace at night but I’m only falling off the edge of my cold bed

I could almost picture what I’m missing but I can’t communicate it.

My words 

miss not yearning so much.

The ache is for times I liked and didn’t.

My missing knows no sense.

I miss my mother’s love even though it was never there,

I’m aware I make it sound like I’ve known it. 

I miss my brother because he’s four countries to the north, 

I’m aware I never miss him when he’s here.

I miss my bed all week but I’ve swapped four in just the last year

I miss all the versions of myself I no longer am, the ones drowned in the sea. 

As I lay in bed tonight,

I wonder if I’ve been reduced to missing 

I wonder if my missing is what makes me absent, missing from myself

I wonder and my pillow starts to feel like sand.

I am cold

cold

cold.