Spells and citruses
Fourth or sixth?
Decades or years?
Lasting scent of teenage years
I can't remember the last time I felt like a deer

Smiles so fake, but pure as the sunny day
Push and pulls from that street we crossed
How each of us had each other's backs
Remember the spell of a frozen time
Made us close like sea to tide
Worlds apart, dangerous in each other's lives
A few sacrifices I faced,
The misery we both faced
Grew us close,
But drew us apart

A suffocating thought, a heaving guilt in its wake
Denials of trust between us
Spells of fear and daydreams between us
Poems we wrote with such grace,
Forgotten in the ink, with such disgrace

Recalls of each memory
A pain in the chest, cardiac arrest
The envious gazes of passersby,
Summer rays blinding us from their slithering sorrows
A blissful movement we made,
A frozen picture in our brains
Silence after all the noise
Reminds me of us
The smiles and tears,
The upset on our faces,
The notes and letters slide away
A bittersweet smile on our face

Honour students we were
Oh, such dreams we lived
Stressed about a test one day,
Laughed about not studying the next
Magical were those days
The late day or the first day?
We met on Thursday
We split on Thursday
Signatures still linger on the school shirt
Markers scattered on the tiled floor, stepped on by many high schoolers
Joy and sadness in our eyes,
Silent goodbyes from afar with just a glance

We never actually said farewell
We were too good to be true
A secret we hid till the last day of truth
Now look where we are
An uncanny whisper of the past
The memories burn a hole in my scalp
The whimsical whistle of the period’s class
Shut the doors far too many times
You said you hated romance,
But touched me with a fever I caught

Slid the notebook to me with a smile,
Gave me snacks while sitting on the last bench
Loved the thunder outside the windowsill
“The favorite days of our prison,” we say until

Kind words from many,
Betrayal by so many
Left a few teardrops in the sky
They never fell with the rain or the midnight sky