I wish my love is your first breath
   of crisp, fresh air;
the first glimmer of sunlight,
   lining the horizons of dawn,
      as the lights of the Ferris wheel burn out;
your lips stained with nostalgia,
   kissed with the cherry tint of candy floss;
the smell of clean fabric against your skin--
   I wish I am--
      fragranced with the scent of popcorn--
after the carnival.

I choked on the crumpled paper
     where our love story we scribbled over.

This is how you know when love is true.

When your senses are numb and yet it pains you so much still, like your lungs are being wring out of blood; like your spine is a tower of stacked-up bones, collapsing; and your words fail and your every desperate action is scarce and all you feel inside well up on your eyes, condensed in an oceanic, salty drop. When you are no one but a void, deluging tears; until your lap is a swamp of one part sorrow and ninety-nine parts nostalgia.

I am he
   who blistered and
   purpled his aching
   fingers, upon playing
   the saddest, dissonant
   melodies out of
   his old, untuned
   guitar, whose strings
   of somber used-to-be's
   he ceaselessly strummed
   and plucked under
   the dullest starless
   night sky; and
   sing of his
   weeping heart the
   poetry of melancholy
   notes half-composed.

It is me--
   the lone guitarist
   on broken avenue
   who never stopped
   playing his love
   song of rue
   since you left--
   whose only lyrics
   is your name
   and your words
   he dearly kept.