the Florida sun and i
baked your memory
into the bricks of Winter Park
i built a home for you
amidst the concrete and stucco
off Mills and Thornton Avenue
outside a crowded little tea-house

we'd read our poetry out front
to choruses of snapping fingers
well after dark
before driving aimlessly
through Orlando streets
with a melancholy soundtrack
keeping us fixed firmly apart

i'd lay my hand like a fallen palm frond
well within your reach
praying to a god i don't believe in
that you'd tease the ink staining my wrists
with your pinprick fingertips

i remember when we
sat beneath the pine trees
i tried to look into your eyes
but the windswept clouds
drifted listlessly
and for a moment
i was blinded

i could've sworn that there
were constellations
where your
irises ought to be
a nebulous Andromeda
hurtling eternally

so send me a sign
through earthquakes
and light-waves
that i don't belong here
pining