my feet are planted on these wooden planks,
the very separation of the soil beds and the stream. your hand’s quick to envelope mine in its warmth. dandelions dance with the cacophony of the breeze. the lighthouse stands tall a few distances from where we stood.
the sky gets littered by colors, sons and daughters of the sun bidding their farewell
everything within the expanse of the lakeshore showered in their translucence-
and quite frankly darling, we’re left with no exception.
you were staring off the distance
and in that moment you were almost miles away-but i didn’t mind,
for i was too mesmerized by the calmness
you were pulled under, the amber gold canvas bleeding in with the havoc it was pierced with.
i swear it was there where we’ve been in our safest state.
maybe that was our arrival to the once unknown destination we were targeting to be in all our plans to run away, fake our deaths.
we were a world away back there
and despite the sun sinking,
it breached the start of a hundred different voyages.
your presence was the closest i’ve felt to home.

in the expanse of a moment we were something more-something more than our sadness and all that we’ve stored in folds within the silhouettes.
and to a random onlooker,
we were just two kids content on being stupid and naive out on a chase for an i don’t know why the **** i’ve been put in this sick sad world but maybe we can stick together and make it ‘til we’re grey sort of happy ending.
to anyone else we weren’t anything but misfits, a pair lacking sense, knowing no better, junkies screaming out pent up emotions to rock songs on rooftops
or taking hairpin turns on 4am roadtrips that fueled the adrenaline.
thrill seekers, jaded
to anyone else, we were nothing more than a reckless pair almost making their way to the big screen or a typewritten poem the paper creasing on the edges.

but there we were made out of the sunset way past sets of bones and fractures by the sky,
the sunset looked like us.
now it’s months later, and we’ve let everything fade,
scratched out all that we’ve casted on the future, of long forgotten lullabies, null whispers- you’ve erased all our texts and chats,
in turn i have thrown out the flowers you picked and your book recommendations, the diy polaroids piled up in a box.
i stopped listening to all the songs you’ve sent. the curtains in my bedroom no longer match the shade of your hazel brown eyes.
the places i once brought you to are now ghost towns you’d get glimpses of in postcards 50 years from now-
at least that’s how they’re portrayed in my mind. but not without taking a drive, letting my footsteps baptize the ground they trample on with a feverish kiss,
one more time, one last time
clearly you’ve chosen to vanish, no traces left for a breadcrumb trail after that night at the diner where we spilled our closures
delivered with so much declaration,
leftover longing left caged in glassy eyes the whole time.
you stormed away with the last pieces of vulnerability, everything done with one final cruel exchange, just like that,
all my drunk texts a non-stop desperation reeking of “i love you’s” left to no reply;
that should signify that we’ve gone unto depths just to burn all our remnants
-maybe you more than i did.

here we are, free of the artifacts pointing back to each other,
from everywhere we’ve ever been
only to be proven of its blatant wrongness;
for we’ve forgotten about the sunsets but it sure as hell wouldn’t allow itself to be put to rest,
and it does the same thing with everything once marked by it.
you’re no longer here and our shadows have long unlearned the dwelling
once found on each other’s spines.
and maybe this you that never vacated my head even now, the one i couldn’t just bring to hate even after you’re no longer the you breathing softly beside the girl with twilight underneath her eyes.
but darling, the afterglows would pursue each time the sun sets;
each time, it unearths the glass shards from our fights and the longing and the butterflies crumbling onto chaos, our aftermath.
i no longer have an idea if you still marvel at the quiet like you once did,
as i stood there in the shades reflected by the currents under rushing with their beating.
“now we’re worlds away but sunsets still look a lot like us.”