I sat outside for hours last night.
I sat outside under the same July stars
twinkling new under an icy, November moon,
shoulders still bare and hair tied back,
looking for the misplaced summer in an anxious fall.

I didn't find it.
I found cigarette ashes clinging to the fur of my boots.
I found crystalline fog glazed cold to my skin.
I drew childish hearts and arrows in the ghost of my breath
and traced glassy teardrops clinging to sweatshirt sleeves.

I sat outside for hours last night
until even my lungs stiffened with the cold.
My clavicles stung with the prickling of snow
and my fingertips ached with the effort of clinging--
to grass, to wood, to paper, to smoke,
to snowflakes falling through liquid-like air,
to memories, to monsters,
to you and to me.

But I couldn't hold us.
We slipped like water through my clutching hands;
we melted like rocks that never even were.
We dripped, trickled, and fell like rain,
and we evaporated in the blaze
of an ending Indian summer.

I sat outside for hours last night
listening for lost crickets hiding sadly under leaves.
They buried themselves too well for me,
better than you ever will, it seems.
You float, always just under the surface of an endless, salty sea
no matter how much concrete
I pour for your shoes.
You never leave.

But I sat outside for hours last night
perfectly alone.