yearning

Here’s what it’s like, splitting custody of my children after spending years putting them to bed each night, dressing them each morning, hearing their laughter and squabbles at all hours, watching their little heads bob as they move.

Sometimes I stand at my stove, stirring noodles into boiling water for myself and it is so quiet that the absence of them fills up my throat.

Sometimes when it’s dark I go for bike rides and it takes everything I have not to steer my bike down their street and pop into their dad’s house and kiss their little heads and tell them goodnight.

Sometimes when I haven’t had them in a couple days I scroll through pictures of them on my phone and cry.

I always think about it being time for them to be dropped off or picked up from school, even when it isn’t my turn.

On Mondays when I pick them up from school again, I squeeze Holden tightly into me and smell his odd sweaty musk, inhale him back into me.

It’s living as a parent all the time but only having children part of the time. It’s incompleteness. It’s yearning, always.