I Miss You Everywhere | nonfiction | Akshita Krishnan

I Miss You Everywhere


Have I told you that I find pieces of you everywhere? Like a shard of glass, a jagged edge, a torn seam, I witness you pressed into places like the pages of a book bound together, writhing in close proximity. 

I look at the garden around me – the climbing rosebush, the fields of bluebonnets, the scattered dandelions; and at the center of it all, the orchids under a gray stone. I look at the trees and their saplings twisting upwards for the sunlight, opening up when its first brushes begin to kiss their skin. I look at the peaches, hanging low and swaying with the breeze, and then I see every part of you in every part of this, and I have to siphon oxygen because my chest constricts, unable to take another breath. 

My eyes draw to the small fountain, the one with cupid perched on it, and I scout that juncture where lines intercross and swivel, and that corner looks like it could fit into my palm like hips – so easily that I lose myself to it in technicolor, and everything dissipates until all I see is that corner, cradled in my hands, your mouth on mine, your name on mine.

And then, the water ripples. 

In every cave, every dip and depression, I find the topography of your skin, like I’ve become a mapmaker, and my next big project is you. My hands wave over those dents you left on my bed, the way it molded to the small of your back, the flesh of your thighs, the jut of your shoulders.

I bend to that edge where I smoothed the crease at the corner of your face, and find myself yearning to worm under your skin again, how everything would just stop for a moment if I could spill into you, in streams of bursted rock and blue lines. How the grief would quell if I could taste the hollow of your neck again. 

There’s something rolling in me, this urge to reach out and hope that, like clockwork, a milky wrist would extend out to me, letting me kiss the pads of its fingers, the skin of its elbow. I swelter under it, watching, waiting, maybe even hoping for the sound of the air whipping around an arm that is so ingrained in my head, some would call it an obsession.

When I hear the slow patter of rain, my heart stops before I can help it, and all I think of is your heartbeat: one, two, three; the counts synonymous with love because I’ve never not been able to feel the slow rumbles it rang through me, delighted and sated to be one with mine, until we were both just a pair of limbs with hearts that wanted to burst out and find each other’s. 

A pair of green flashes at me from the wedges of insect splatters at the foot of the tree and … I have no idea what to say. All I want to do is stop time, rewind, and find that moment I colored your skin purple, when I woke up with the smell of citrus and hyacinths in my nose and pressed my lips to the ridges of your spine, your collarbones, your hips, until you began transferring that fire over to me, burning me alive. 

Even now, as fresh earth assaults me, filling my throat with bile, I give myself to you, reverently, viscerally, carnally, whichever way you’ll have me, because all you are is home to me, where I belong, and I’ll find my way back, tugging on red threads until cartography draws me to you, and I’ll perish underneath your touch, allowing you to slice and stitch however you want.

Akshita Krishnan (she/her) is a high school student who likes to use writing to make sense of the world. Her work has most recently appeared in local contests. You can find her at @_akshitakrishnan_ on Instagram.