A poem for a lonely commute

So I haven't posted for a while about my situation, but Dave is still in D.C. and I am still in Chicago.  He is kicking butt at his policy job, which is the whole point of him going out there, so hopefully he will be able to transfer back to Chicago and work from here sometime in the next year.

Meanwhile, it has been five months since I drove him out to D.C., and we have had our ups and downs, but overall we're learning how to live apart and developing strategies to feel closer.  Long distance sucks, but anything is livable in the short-term.  (I had read that recently in "Orange is the New Black" - that anything is livable for a year.)

I had to go downtown for a class today, and the commute was emotional for me because I miss this commute that I used to have with Dave.  We'd take the train downtown, he worked in the Citigroup building, we'd have lunch, I'd meet him after work, we would walk downtown sometimes - you know, a life together.

Now I am inhabiting those spaces alone - or at least without him - and I was feeling very poetic today after reading some verses in The Undertaking, a very interesting book by a poet-undertaker in Michigan.  I thought of some lines, wrote them down, and sent them to Dave this afternoon.  In case any other sufferers in long distance relationships are interested, I thought I'd share it here.

* * *

Workers walking to and fro -
A place familiar, yet limbo.
Seek not his face upon the stairs,
You will not find him; he is not there.

Among the teeming streets I hear
The laughter of some far-off year.
Do not reach out to hold his hand,
It is not there, please understand.

An empty seat upon the train -
What once was claimed lies free again.
A ride so lengthy and lonesome,
Do not await him, he will not come.