Love and time are two
relatively tied
concepts that you and I
are no longer
aligned with.*

Summer feels like
yesterday to me
(you see, I still
dream of you, as much
as I don't wish to),

and for you,
summer feels like a holiday
vacation that ended
a week too short
when the storm came early
and the clouds covered
up the sun, yet -

faintly, you remember
the warmth of the beach
and the familiar
touch of the water against
your feet/
faintly, you remember
me,

and too often, I toss
against you
in my sleep - wrestling
with these memories.

Every stranger on the street
has sunk deep into the night at least once,
or twice, and I'd wager
that at times their thoughts have unfurled
into black dishrags soaking up
the insignificant amounts
of vivacity-
pouring pride into the sewer,
praying desperately to recover.

Eventually, time pries a crack
into the soul, and peels back
the skin of morality until the lines
no longer meet and the mind
reels- searching for the baseline
of sanity- save me, someone
save me.

The wind, a curling
yell between the streets;
the leaves, a watercolor
spilling out into
the evening/ paint it
pretty as you're leaving.

I hunger for all
the words you will never say-

the good in goodbye

Closure is hardly ever
the clean cut we desire;
it can warp in heated,
heavy air
-putrid convolution-
an apple core shrinking inside
itself (till its existence
is defined by its silent
exodus).

We play with silence like a child
plays with a rubber band -
we stretch it and bend it until
it breaks, or until we tire
of the same old game.

The scales are rarely ever
even, and too often
I find myself laden with love -
sinking with the sick feeling
that I will drown this way,
that I will suffocate;

and you weren't anything
exceptional:

on the last day of camp, equipped
with a sharpie you wrote
your name - isolated/ the same -
on the cabin wall, while I
wrote mine - changed/ beside
the phrase: "I fell in love
too many times to count, and I will
bleed until this love dies"
and only then will the scales shift,
and my hollow heart will rise -
a victory? Maybe.