The summer is memories

Of chalked drawings and hopscotch squares

I still find it under my nails

Thin layer of dust in pastels

Crammed under, compacted

With summers of my childhood

Reduced to hieroglyphs

Incomplete scribbles, a broken language

Of friendships long forgotten

And places long lost

I can’t help but feel regret

For I was willing to reduce my childhood

To nothing more than chalked reminders

Beneath my nails

I used to talk to fill up the space

Words tripping, fluttering from my mouth

And I became my own white noise

Felt you always lurking in the hallway

Peeking through the doorway until I slammed

The door, loud crash that would reverberate

Slamming into the walls, I hadn’t always

Been so welcoming to you and you had been patient

While I clumsily stumbled and I pushed you away

Afraid of your embrace, my nerves ****** and jumped

Moth wings my lips, and the words tripping, fluttering

From my lips, and you had always been a light

Flickering, hand out-stretched, your smile invited

I don’t know why I had been afraid

the distance between

you and I

is a single word

hovering upon my lips

clings to me

and I grip on to it

hoping it won't slip away

disappear, be forgotten

me with you

I let my fingers

remain in your grasp

for an extra second

hoping I won't slip away

from you

I should have known
That when you wrote
I love you
At the end of the card
It would be fleeting
The ink bled
And the words broke down
As quick as my heart
It all faded in the end
Even your name on my lips

He asked me to confess expectations
An open dare to my emotions
My heart clanged against ribcage
Shaking the sturdiness of my spine
And I cried, each tear
Their own confession
As my expectations trailed down my cheeks
And I couldn’t tell him the truth
Or deliver him my hope
In a careful created box of words
I could trace the exit wounds of each exe
And the pain lingered, small phantoms
I wasn’t ready to let him go
So when he asked for a confession
I didn’t give him my emotions
Because how could I expect him to stay
When everyone leaves?

Sputtering out words
I felt the emotion
Collect upon my face
In tiny droplets
Passion and hatred
Streak the same
As they run
Down your face

We collect in boxes
Pixelated faces
Shifting back and forth
Our voices clamor against each other
We gather in arrangements
Of electronic meetings
The pandemonium of the pandemic
Has us learning to live in a science fiction novel
Trading in the outside word
For our little cubicles
As we learn to avoid the invisible invasion
Trying to ****** our bodies
We assemble in various forms
Video or voice streaming
Learning to create, to produce
To live within the pixelated dots
Of the computer screen