Gap

You are the gap at top table on my wedding day, the arms not holding my new baby, the empty space in my father’s bed. You are the gap, void, emptiness, nothing, absence and lack.

On some days I don’t notice the gap at all; there’s work, Nicky, emails, phone calls, bills to be paid, life to be done.

Other days… all there is is the void.

A great big gap.

You are the hug I didn’t have when Karen left me, the letters I never received when I moved away, you are the absence at the end of the phone line, the missing laugh when I tell a joke.

You are the hole in the bridge from my childhood to my adult life. You are the blank space in the census form I helped my father fill in, you are the missing fart at Christmas dinner, you are the missing yin to my family’s yang.

You are the hole, six feet deep in the ground.

You are the most important gap in the world.