Things I Can’t Live Without

By Ela Angevine

I need your lips and your pasta salad, Your touch that makes my heart flutter and your “that’s valid.” I can’t live without your comfort.

Your hugs: I can’t live without your arms around me, they make adrenaline run through my veins calmly with a silence that envelops —something that only you can give me.

Our overwashed and stiff rags are soaked with all-purpose cleaning spray and you wait for me to clean because you know I cannot live without that stress relief.

You need constant supervision while you study or the assignments will only be started, not complete; and I work until you no longer are. I don’t want to live without your habit of distracting me until I stop.

My bed is covered with your checkered sheets, your smell is in my head, the last semblance of sameness, though nothing is at all. Imagining our bedtime routine is the lullaby I can’t live without.

In the dark you swim before my eyes and a smile that I cannot survive without passes wordlessly between us —even all these miles away I know.

Sometimes I dream without you and I am still here but nowhere I want to be, without you. A cloud to the sun, you envelope me with air; I can’t live without your breath.

Everything else can be replaced or forgotten, but you’re all the things I can’t live without: my cheer and sorrow, my drive and fears. All I need to do is wish and you’ll appear.