The aquarium is a jar
that crams the bottomless sea,
within a glass bottle.
Like the pool of liquid in my palms
that reflects the starry sky above,
it is a fragment
of what cannot be fractured.

“I miss you,” she said.
The words departed her lips,
hovered in the air —
chilled by the emptiness of our hearts.
I watched them
twitched, fluttered, and deflated.
Falling onto the table,
like dead birds.
Broken wings shot by old guns,
empty words strung together —
I read between the lines,
and heard the unspoken —
“The old you.”

I look at you
and dream of sunflowers
because you told me once
that home was where the sunflowers were
and I’ve been awaiting summer since then.