but what is forever, if not days just numbered too slow? then, love, we have spent forevers with a couple of sighs and a cigarette away from breaking under the moon — such a devastatingly beautiful sight. then, love, we have spent forevers with cherry-red lips against the thinnest parts of the skin, like dahlias pressed to the pages of a coffee-stained book. then, love, we have spent forevers naming skyscrapers and dying lights — calling them magic, calling them ours. then, love, we have spent forevers crafting words out of our pulses, leaving unintelligible whispers in the wake.

this no storm; this is the calm's betrayal.

and yet, i will hold you the way december holds onto her nights made of hours slipping too slow. i will recite to you all my unwritten postcripts until we have a word for emptiness, so searing — for forevers that end too soon. i will kiss you for the last time, even when these kisses are but the final blunders. i will slowly strip all this remaining love — i have nowhere to leave it in but here — in the space between these words. and i will depart amid the night's silence, leaving behind a briefcase of poems and dahlias bent at the stem, knowing that we have spent forevers against each other's skin, on each other's lips, in each other's arms.

but then, love, what is forever, if not days just numbered too slow?