No longer will the daybreak find letters
sent in a rush to the last of the stars.
No longer will it find
a box of fallen eyelashes and wishbones
and birthday candles
and all the remnants of these lips
wishing for cancelled plans and library dates
and warm Sunday afternoons
spent on kitchen floors,
running high on shared laziness and unwashed shirts.

Darling, love’s eyes are never ours
to behold in these daylight-tainted
sheets;

so if it’s darkness that shows me the safe space,
that allows our eyes to collide like seas
if it’s neon lights and the noise of the bass that look at us —
like we’re a well-buried secret
like t h i s,
can be poetry
just underlain by permafrost,

then maybe this —
you.
and a white flag waved in the dark: a fair trade —
can be beautiful, can be enough in itself.

Then maybe it’s fine not knowing;
maybe it’s fine not being yours.