The Real

I could taste the cigarette filter
from your lips when we kissed,
the wetness of your fingernails beneath my fingertips,
the frigid February air,
lingered in a moment, ephemeral,
like flowers that begin to decay
the moment it begins to bud.

Between our lips, where breath lingers
word manifests as a bridge:
we go from one end to the other,
without feeling its weight;

all those days and years, nights,
frail ephemeral permanence
framed in a moment;
I hate your photographs—
they resemble frozen representations
of what was, now displayed to be gazed
in chilly nights—for the real,
always the real
is what concerns me:
the real that you are not here with me.