There are mornings the body wakes before reality does

I still reach in my sleep.
That’s the humiliating part.

It isn’t metaphor.
It’s physical.
My body does it.

My hands reach the way they once reached for a rifle.
They reach for safety.
For comfort.
For her.
Sunlight on her skin and the smell of the ocean.

Sometimes my hand closes on cold sheets
before I’m awake enough to understand why.

Sometimes I wake before I know what I’m doing.
Most times I don’t.

And then there is that moment—
the one where the world is still as I want it to be,
before I remember
it isn’t.