Ruth is not her name, it's a spell a rustling in the throat before dawn a hush stitched in maple-blood and peach whisper say it slow: Ru-th it drips, saccharine like time molassesed in a Sunday afternoon
She tells me she’s not into things no favourite colour, no band, no dream but she is the thing nostalgia caught her like static on film she watches old light like it's scripture and I, blasphemously devout, watch her
there’s a warmness in her, so I name it apricity I read the word once and thought of her skin the colour of fallen leaves that don’t rot they just rest her voice if lullabies melted and reassembled as language it bruises me sweetly like a secret I asked to be told
she says “I’m not an angel” but that’s the trick, isn’t it the one named Angel descended without falling
her hair weeps like willow vines soft revolutions on her neck her lips, pink punctuation in my favourite sentence azalea, cherry blossom blush and bloom and ache
I live with her in my pupils because the mind is too crude for safekeeping if I stored her in thought even shadows would steal her silhouette
are we friends, or echoes of a kiss never asked for I write this like I’m folding my feelings into origami cranes hoping one will fly out of this letter and perch on her shoulder I’ll never tell her. Or maybe I just did Ruth. Angel. glitch in my platonic code you are not a memory you are the pause in everything before it becomes one