Part I

When the bombs dropped, were you still standing?

We met at midnight at Julia Farrow’s house.
You had drawn stars on your skin in silver ink
And whatever you were drinking had sloshed out of your red plastic cup
and smudged the doodles
I said hello, trying to step out of my element.
You looked up, smiled, looked back down and said hey.
I wasn’t sure if that meant you wanted to talk,
but you didn’t walk away so I kept going.

At some point, we moved outside.
I think it might have been one a.m.
By three, I was in the backseat of your car,
and by three thirty, I was pulling my jeans back on.
Eight months later, I got to do the same in the bed on the floor of our new apartment.
We were together, and god, was it good.

Your mouth tasted like if heaven made cherry ice cream.
And your fingers on my waist, well
They felt like if the northern lights could dance on icy waters.
I never wanted to leave your side.
And babe, Sunday mornings lying sprawled on our sides were my idea of eternity.
We both knew **** well it couldn’t last.

I mean, I did love you.
You were a mass of colours and small explosions just barely contained in that lovely skin of yours.
And I was a tragic backstory, a half-assed galaxy reforming into something tentatively new.
And we loved each other, we really loved each other.
But it was perfect, too much to handle.
We were Rome before the fall
And I had no idea when the bomb was going to go off.

Part II*
So my question is
When the bombs dropped, were you still standing?

Because I wasn’t.
I had fallen on my knees,
Broken down in the bathroom too many nights to know that it was going to be okay.
You didn’t know what to do with your hands anymore,
and I didn’t know what to tell you,
But they sure weren’t on my waist anymore
and you couldn’t tell me if it was Sunday or not,
because the blinds were always closed.

I tried to piece it together,
I found Rome, the bombs, the shrapnel and ourselves amidst the rubble
but I couldn’t find out the motives,
where the bombs came from,
where you were when they struck,
what happened to the northern lights and the cherry ice cream and why that pond we like to go to dried up and cracked under the atmosphere.
I couldn’t find the middle please help me find it

I was in the corner of another party at Julia Farrow’s house, red cup in hand, feeling like highschool, and I couldn’t find you in the crowd.
That was where I was when they hit me.
Pulling me to my knees, dragging me by my hair
It’s been another eight months since they hit me and scratched me and clawed me
and we’ve only spoken four times since we realized we were living in shattered bones
and I’m sorry to come to you now
but I can’t figure out where you were.

So my final question,
when the bombs dropped,
were you still standing?
For your sake,
I hope you weren’t.