I follow rainbow gutter rivers back to my empty downtown apartment.
When I was young, I looked up at these buildings in awe.
Shiny glass towers full of giants,
staring down at me, ant-like and enamored.
You looked beautiful in your wedding dress,
they said.

A decade spent selling disposable garbage to the masses,
rereading Ogilvy on Advertising and wearing uncomfortable shoes.
Today I’m one of those giants.
Do you still throw darts at my picture?
Do you ever think about me,
at all?

A thousand miles away, a little girl asks her mother,
to make her a cherry pie for her birthday.
She knows it’s my favorite.
If we have cherry pie, maybe he’ll come to my party,
she says.

Seven drinks later, I told my dad I was miserable.
A hollow shell of anything I’d ever planned to be.
He didn’t believe me.
After all, I had never let him down,
before.

The last time we saw one another, we ate dinner on the floor.
You smelled like you’d been on fire.
A week later, I found a strand of your hair in my bed,
and sighed.

It was nearly sunrise when I arrived,
leaving a trail of clothes all along my floor.
Lying in bed, I thought about how long ago yesterday was.
All those slow summer mornings,
and three-day goodbyes.

I stare down at the streets below,
as innocent wide-eyed dreamers shuffle their feet on cold sidewalks.
Somewhere a young boy leaves home for the first and last time,
and I think about how beautiful you still look,
in photographs.