abstraction, n.
“Love is an abstraction,” I said. It was late at night, when such sentences take on a more profound weight than they deserve.
You took your hand off my shoulder, pulled away to the edge of the bed, whispered, “When I’m not here, what am I?”
Those nights when I sleep alone, when I curl into a pillow that’s not you, when I hear the tip-toe sounds that aren’t yours, it’s not like I can conjure you there completely. I must embrace the idea of you instead.
So I answered, “An abstraction.”