We were play dates shutting down dive bars, biting off more than we could chew.
The echoes of our laughter
crescendoed over the sea of lonely patrons,
a somber feeling that we unfortunately knew.
Were we captivated by conversations
or had it subconsciously been our eyes all along?
Windows to the soul.
Holding onto the agonies,
that only we would ever truly know.
Our rugged exteriors,
so easily unraveled with subtlety.
Eye contact,
rarely,
if ever,
was it realized so indiscriminately.
I intentionally drug my feet
when we walked the frostbitten winter streets
taking in music
and whatever that feeling was,
because,
we were warned it’s not for us to keep,
we’ll always lose it.
I trailed behind you in a childlike protest,
prolonging the inevitable,
of cleaning up yet another self inflicted mess.
Hands would wander down the alleyways,
our bodies merely in tow,
illuminating the darkness,
to wrestle with our invisible foe.
“You better go.
Now.
I’m beginning to like you.”
Grasping,
pulling,
unwavering grip.
“It’s the way you’d bite my lower lip
and push your hips against my hips”
as you breathed your afflictions into me,
daring me to come home.
All too familiar was the suffering
that pulsed throughout my veins,
displaced residuals of ecstasy, solitude, unrelinquished pain.
What happened to the time?
We tiptoed through a hazy slew
of a hundred halfhearted goodbyes.
I always turned back around
to steal another glimpse though.
I thought you knew why.
I thought you knew why,
I thought you knew,
I thought…