So much like a cigarette.
In and out.
Carriage between two lips.
A hand.
Two lips.
A hand.
A sticking smell.
Hanging ashes after
leaving itself behind.

I look up through burning gleams
at an opened window.
The rippling curtains
wave to me,
begging my attention.

I hear stifled screams.

A woman closes the window.
The hazy curtains stand still and
separated.
The woman stands still and
separated.

A man passes
in and out of the newly paned frame
And then a child.
And then a fist.

Suddenly it’s broken.
My beloved
lies below my hands.
Aquamarine, amethyst and citrine.
My stones
now unstrung.
You were my ‘promise ring’
my ‘engagement jewelry’.
You gave it to me
and I promised to return to you
Santorini.

Then it shifts:
I am pleading
in your aquamarine waters.
“Forgive me”
Pleading to your citrine hills.
“I promise”
Pleading, pleading
while your amethyst moon watches,
because it is always watching.

The further we walked
the thicker the blonde grass grew.
Soon it was grabbing
at our legs.

We couldn’t carry on
a conversation anymore.
The surrounding landscape
swallowed any desire.  

“A huge human head, ahead.”

We approached a foothill
with the curve of a scalp
and a roaring view of a nectarine
sliding down behind the horizon.

We followed a drifting trail
overlooking the dam.
Dusk had turned the water
into pineapple juice.

A metal gate sprouting
from the ground
interrupted our silence.
“This might be too tall.”

I tried to climb
despite my fear of heights.
I wedged a foot between the bars
and reached as high as I could.

My strength broke.
It was too tall.

All that is left
is an echoing in a vacant chest.
The silence of someone holding back.
A glowing, golden room
and softly strung strings
are not enough.
Your pretty words
and perfect apologies
are not enough.
A deserted, emptied bottle
once filled with stale fruit
waits on the counter.
You laugh at how it resembles our spirits.
I sit and smile
while the wax weeps in the corner.
My smile is fake.
So I run.

Wide, high,
and infinite with clarity.
Yet despite my tries,
the opposite of my mentality.
More than anything
I want to mirror the skies.
Just like the seas
full of their tides.
Full of their waves
and yellow eyes.
And in the end
the seas no lie.
And in the end
just like the sky.
And in the end
nothing of mine.