the space at the back of your knees was always straight; you never bent your legs and held the air rigorous around them. compensating for this, your shoulders were forward, fixing your eyes on a seam in the sidewalk just a few inches deep but crawling with breath and some child’s skinned palms
and the gap between your collarbone and rib cage was a moat. fingers could sink between the lines, between the countries that made up the map, folding and unfolding you, and between the rivers of everything you contemplated as you slept. a smile crept over your spine.
elbows locked around the town, a fist forming the peak of the hill that everything washed around. you were the boundaries, the clumsy first kiss behind the school, the same bricks every time, and nobody is alone. all the graffiti holds itself in place with memories.
i could tell you were leaving by the way you said “love” so many times in so few words and your eyes were already blurred, looking anywhere but here and the light had moved its way over you, and you wanted to leave right then, just to separate your body from its tight and unrelenting binding you had draped yourself in all those years ago, being in this place