The Starbucks was torn down
where my fantasies of us
were set apart from
tangibles that shattered
my existence;
its been five years since then
and I never wrote a metaphor
better to describe the mark
that was left on that day
or in the inevitability that
all things must change

Because I once painted
a dark haired girl
the color of my world
it was art on its way to self-demise
overshadowed by the comfort of
those nights that we would hide
blending into our chameleon moonlight,
she left me with many questions
but the answer to only one:
becoming empty enough to know
how not to love

This lesson was carved into the stone
of that suburban parking lot,
a reflection of her succinct goodbye
that collided with the surface of
every whisk to breakfast and sunshine
she rejected in my room,
engulfing me in combusted lies
mixed with the scent of coffee
and fleeting perfume

I was left smoldering on concrete
with the opus of an imbalanced soul
that reduced me to nothing inside
except reluctant aches that
ravished in our severed ties,
and all I could do was sit there
basking in the rays of the only time
we ever shared morning light