There was heat lightning as I walked back home that night.
it was Saturday, or rather, Sunday,
5 am, still dark
when I got his text and I wondered this: how far can two strangers go?
how quick can two fall in Love,
and just how quick does it take
for ignorance to come on?
Love is not Love anymore.
but I’ll admit to missing this,
only to you, my reader:
I do sometimes miss the sight of my once lover
walking towards our table with two cups of coffee in hand.
he hasn’t memorized my order yet, and I’m content with this.
it’s moving slowly, we’re just friends that happen
to spend a lot of time together, and share favorite movies,
and favorite songs, and could listen to a newly discovered old album
all the way through
just lying on his bed
and gazing at each other.
we could stare into the other’s eyes till we found our own reflection.
he was in me as much as I was in him.
Love is not love anymore
when I’ve left that part of me in upstate new york, in another land.
Love is being content.
but I am not content with myself
or my others that try to be significant,
like the one who sent that text,
hopeless, romantic, and misguided.
I am not in Love, reader,
not since him.
so when I got this text and he said that he could imagine us together,
holding hands, in a state beyond
nice, simple, naïve, simplistic
friendship,
I paused
stuck in my place,
for long enough that the lightning had a chance
to greet the storm.
the rain pummeled down, extraterrestrial,
and the bag of White Castle burgers I carried
disintegrated.
as the bag narrowed down in size, sliders plopping down onto the pavement
I kept running towards my home, trying to forget that our friendship was in question.
Love is not love anymore.
it scares me more than it should.
I’d rather let my seven dollars go to waste,
than give into love’s blind, bitter taste.
I’d rather my toms be pounded down into the pavement by the rain
and later spend three days drying in the back of my closet
and have the security guard stare at me, confused,
as the last of my sliders fall down onto the sidewalk outside his door.
“That’s a mess,” he says,
as if I didn’t know,
and he makes no move to help me clean it up,
so I choose not to reply to him.