this summer, i witnessed my first thunderstorm.
a flicker of flight or fight and a soft flutter upon the frames
on your skin, i share this moment with the sky.

drinking this can of coca-cola, i am reminded of you
only briefly, as brief as the bubbles fizzle to the
surface, and catch a glimpse of a life beyond their own

”do we ever catch a glimpse beyond what we know?”
like taking in the first smell
of freshly washed laundry. breathe it in with me.

i know it lasts as long as we know it. eating away
until it becomes a void in a carcass; i begin
missing a piece of myself in someone else.

if only you had told me what you’d been thinking,
what had been missing in yourself.
we are nowhere as close to what we miss in one another.

except when i see you again, the shadows in your eyes
are replaced by the sound of your heart, pounding with gasoline.
i watch you drift away in the sea of bodies, finger on the trigger.

yet i can’t take that away from you so my own greed
fills the place of my heart, reckoning without reason.
we held the world in our palms, infinite and true.

was it because of your fins,
much too brittle for this ocean,
became too soft for me to notice?

please;
let me tell you, dear friend,

i wish you
would have been
more selfish