On the 13th day,
I recognized the feeling
of you in my body linked
to those boyfriends of my lovely
high school and college past
who I had but did not have,
that I yearned for because
there was a bittersweet beauty
to being near you,
an endless longing
unanswerable with words
and unjustifiable to touch.
Are you leaving?
I know who I am
if you do.
But who will I be
if you don’t?
–Shaun Perkins
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 
Bittersweet