i like her body when it is with my body

"i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new" - Edward Estlin Cummings

(I told you I would continue...)
Since I met Marie, the longest I have ever been away from her at one time is 106 days. I spent 106 days in Israel, and she spent them in Santa Clarita, California. Those were days before I understood the real value of Skype or of a computer with a built in webcam. I did Skype with Marie a little, but mostly over instant message conversations. We probably only had two or three voice conversations, and those were without being able to see each other. Even those were short, as we couldn't really hear each other well, and the speaking/hearing delay was too frustrating to converse for very long.
The week before I left her had been a whirlwind of cutting chapel sessions, breaking rules, staying out all night in Hollywood, eating Diddy Riese cookies, and smoking hookah until our wallets were empty. In that one week, I had managed to grab another "boyfriend" to make dance by his marionette strings, to successfully disgust Marie with my exploitative behavior, and to smoke myself into a hookah hangover.
Early on the morning of January 20th, I woke her up, along with our best friends Nessa and Chris and my boyfriend John. They walked me to main campus where I hugged them all and kissed John and boarded a bus to LAX. Even as disgusted at Marie was with me, she was the only one to run alongside the bus, with her hand on my hand, separated by the window, until she couldn't keep up.
Like I said, those were technologically "primitive" days, so I did not see her again until May 5th. In fact, I probably only instant messaged her a handful of times, but, that semester, she changed my life. When I saw her again, it was face-to-face, and I was a completely different person that I had been when I pressed my hand against that bus window. She was so proud of me. She hugged me, picking me up, and spinning me around several times before putting me back on the groud, beaming at me. Our friendship was completely different from anything it had ever been before, and from any other friendship on our campus. Our souls had begun to adhere to one another's. I had no desire to be separate from her again, although, through many twists of fate, I would be for various lengths of time.

Two years later, we were separated again, this time for 64 days. It began on May 9th, 2009, and it ended on July 14th, 2009. Again, when I saw her, I never wanted to be apart from her again. We were knit together completely now. On that day, almost two years ago, she held my hand. And she took me on our first date to an awkward movie ("The Hangover"), and to happy hour at Chili's. She presented me with the most beautiful birthday present I have ever received, a bilingual copy of La Commedia with a hand-painted cover, circa 1900. She took me to her small ranch house in Boerne, Texas, where we exchanged silver necklaces. I gave her my diamond-lined heart pendant; she gave me a silver key pendant. We had a movie "re-do" with a less awkward movie. And during The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we kissed. It was the first of many kisses, and the beginning of my vita nuova. It was then that our adherence to each other began to intensify into a blending of our individual persons, body and soul, into one.
It was an adventure. It was charming and clumsy, romantic and rickety, blissful and blushing. We struggled through stammers and darting eyes to communicate our love and fears. We fumbled our way through shyness with tears dripping from our chins, and, just as often, with laughter paralyzing us and dropping us to the floor. In time, the shyness gave way to pure joy. I had chosen to love Marie, complete with her freckles, silky soft skin, mastery of the English language, distended abdomen, days of non-stop vomiting, and Episcopalian idealism. She chose to love me complete with cinnamon skin tone, full lips, torn Levi's, love of plotless action films, hot temper, and dogmatic reasoning. We accepted everything about each other, whether we found it agreeable or not. When I held her, I held all of her, even the parts that made me angry, hurt me, confused me, or that I wished I could heal. When she held me, I felt her stubbornly envelope every piece of me, even the pieces that I was trying to hide, change, or remove.

And then one night, May 23rd, 2011, she was gone. All of her. The parts I loved. The parts that hurt me. The parts that I wanted to fix. The parts that made me cry into my pillow at night. The parts that made me smile so big that my face ached. The parts that I rested my head on. The parts that I kissed. The parts that I picked up and carried from room to room. The parts that I threw remote controls at when I was angry. The parts that threw Coca-Cola glasses at me when she was angry.

This woman that I was permanently intertwined with was wrested away from me just as my grip on her heart had gotten tighter.
The passionate love that coursed through me, so electrifyingly thrilling, now wracks me like a taser with its barbs embedded securely into my heart, torturing me with that same electricity.

I want to hold her, to kiss her, to feel her warmth wrapped around me and caressing me. But she is decomposing, her lips shriveled and black, her corpse as cold as the soil is six feet into the earth. I want her to feel my soft kisses along her lovely back. But her nerves are dead, her back a thin layer of flesh over a clearly-visible spine and ribcage. I want to gaze into her shining green eyes, letting her read the smiles that sparkle out of mine. But her eyes have dried up and sunken into her skull, and the lights in my own eyes have been extinguished.

I cannot wash her towels; they have her dead skin cells on them.
I cannot wash her water bottle; the lips that I would give anything to kiss again touched it.
I cannot throw out moldy bread; she bought that bread on one of our Safeway adventures.
I cannot throw away her junk mail; it was sent to her when this was her home.
I cannot wash my teddy bear; she "left lots of hugs with him".

I cannot let go of anything that might have even the tiniest molecule of Marie left in it.
I cannot hold onto anything new that is not part of her or that I cannot share with her.