I remember the taste of salt on our lips as we kissed,
The tears streaking our faces as our mouths met for the very last time.

Secret and forbidden, we had agreed for some while that we would have to walk it back;
But only now had the time for goodbye come upon us.

She was wearing rose oil and her black wool coat and her hair was a dark fountain pouring down her shoulders.

We turned, parted. A foot. Three yards. Fifty paces; with each step my spirit drained from me and became ephemera.

I thought, if this is what life can make us to feel sometimes…I want no more of it.

Finding an alleyway, I mashed my fists against the bricks until they were slick with blood;
a homeless man turned the corner and found me.

Graciously silent, his face was sad for me as he watched me on my knees making sounds like an expiring animal,
every moan, every bark, every growl a testimony from my heart:

I love her
I love her
I love her

Like a movie, she took a job two times zones away, and
I stayed behind to become a hollow shell,
the world washed in sepia.

I tried to cleanse her from my soul; I would lift my eyes and find the sunrise, raise my jaw against the wind.

But every short brunette in the morning coffee shop line, every cream-colored sedan,
every vibration from my phone
was another taste of unrequited hope, and
I would have to start over.

She would return to me at unexpected times.
Sometimes between the pages of a book, or a clever ensemble on a busy sidewalk,
or in the lyrics from a song…

If you leave…don’t look back.

I heard of the accident in a crowded bar, her and her fiancée, from a friend who didn’t know any better;
No one knew any better.

Nor did they know what to do,
or say,
or why…
as I faltered and fell to a knee in between the pool tables in back,
my hand clamped over my eyes as if the tears would be stayed.

I never visited the piece of stone that bore her name.
Her spirit already whispered it as it haunted my heart.