(not untitled, but no title)

I've never really been able to explain Imogene in a coherent fashion. 

I think it's because the so-called living don't understand what it's like being trapped between the two worlds like I am. between here and there. between now and then. they don't get how I can't assign myself to one or the other, life or death. they certainly don't grasp that Imogene, my Imogene, my beginning, my end, was more than just a girl, a person. she was a smile. she was a kiss. she was a laugh, a fuck, a teardrop. she was a place. she was a time. she was a feeling. 

when I met her, it was like getting in touch with an old friend after years of separation. as we told each other about ourselves and pretended to get acquainted, there was a recognition, a familiarity, a sigh of "oh, I already know you" and relief at finally being reunited. 

when I kissed her, it was everything you grew up expecting kisses to be. it was like the point in the movie where the hero, whom you'd never doubted all along, finally gets the kiss from his object of affection that you wanted him to have in the very first act.  it was the first spoonful of pudding in your grade school lunch box, cool and sweet. the way it slipped over your tongue and slid down your throat with ease, conforming perfectly to the shape of your mouth, coating your lips with a light sheen of happy that left you hungry for more as soon as you licked it off. 

the nights we stayed up worshipping each other, the nights that were ultimately when she first set hooks in my heart, were just like the concerts you went to as a teenager. the exhilaration of the sound waves being so strong they were tangible, bodies packed in, sweaty and excited, like Alaskan salmon battling to get upstream. it was those nights I fell for her like a stage dive, that feeling of "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing but I'm gonna do it anyway!" that sensation of your toes leaving solid ground, a nervous, electric free fall, and finally, being caught by eager, frantic hands. 

being in love with her was a drive in the fall. the colors were vivid, the ride was smooth, and the air itself was enough to make you feel alive. 

being without her was a week of insomnia. the flies on the wall saw you pace and moan, saw you whimper and turn circles in your bed until you (almost on accident) wound your sheets into a makeshift noose. they buzzed about your head, following you from room to room to empty pointless room, all the while making a constant droning sound that you hear even still.

getting her back was the shower after a very, very long, hard day. she was the water you lifted your face up to, no reservation or hesitation, letting it drench you from the top of your tired, weary head and rush it's way down over your sore throat, your aching shoulders, your protruding hips, down the backs of your trembling knees.  imagine letting her wash the day and the exhaustion and everything that wasn't her off your flushed exposed skin while the steam rose and filled your lungs and cleared your senses. and when you just can't take the downpour of hot and the thick, wet clouds anymore, you turn the water off, wrap yourself in terry cloth love, and emerge a new person. 

losing her was the worst ill you've ever been. the pain and tired, coupled with the "how?" and the "why,?" covered in "ohmyfuckingGODwillthiseverbeover?!"  it was the oaths you swore to a god you usually don't believe in, laying in your own toxic sweat, swearing things you don't usually mean but you would mean them this time if only this misery would stop, or even lessen. it was a car wreck, terrifying and chaotic. it was trading your existence for the color red; like going from having and appreciating all five senses and the variety that they afford you, to the only thing you know being the touchtastesmellsoundlook of searing heat. 

but these aren't specific memories, experiences.  this is just the closest I can get to describing a girl, the girl I lived and died for. the girl who took me aback, took me aside, took me from behind; I was so taken with her. explaining that to the average joe has only ever gotten me the kind of glassy-eyed, slack-jawed stare that so often precedes "do you want some fries with that?" 

I have trouble believing that anybody who didn't know her, and know her the way I did, was ever really alive anyway. 

she's my heart, my lungs. 

she's my blood, my air. 

...haunted or not, ghost or not, the fact is she's still fucking gone.