sometimes I wonder if I have ever really seen your face
there’s nothing left to explain
to this day I don’t know
if you were ever real (there was
nothing to say
maybe I just don’t remember) sometimes
my hands (my lips) still imagine your skin
the plaster of your ceiling hangs like blood clots
in my veins (the color of the walls mutating
before my closed eyes
I have never felt closer to neverland)
I don’t talk about you
I never did
no one has ever looked at me that way again
(maybe it was something about talking
to the other side of the world
that made me into a moment instead of a past)
maybe the thing I’m most sorry for
is that I will never regret you
(your name still tastes like peppermint) it is summer now
and I still remember your hot phantom hands
on my frozen cheeks
(I remember your voice like dragonfly wings)
maybe that’s why when I remember your eyes
my blood is lighter than it has ever been
I can feel your smile like starlight in mine
you breathed into my lungs once
and you have been there ever since
you were not my north star (though maybe I was yours)
you were my ocean (and
to a child’s eye all the stars look the same anyway)
maybe the thing I’m most sorry for
is that I don’t miss you because
after all these years
your anthracite eyes are steam beneath my fingers
(there’s a kind of purity in dirt and
there’s a kind of innocence in you)
after all these years my footprints dot your foreign soil
(there’s a kind of hope in me)
because after all these years of swimming
of air that tasted different with every breath
of eyes blinking against the epileptic cosmos
(stars lips teeth hips)
after all these years of running
it was not even strange to be in love with you