we’d sit smoking
on your grandmother’s porch

drinking cheap whiskey
and counting the stars in the sky

you’d play your guitar
until your fingers bled

trying to convince me
that love was real

but I never believed

not even when each star
had a name

and each string hummed
beneath your fingers

like magic

years later,
I thought of those nights

and how different
my life could have been

if I’d just took a chance
on love