have you heard the way that girl speaks
her voice cracks skies in half and splits seas in two

It should take more to bring me to tears.
I shouldn’t quiver at the sight of the moon’s light peeking through a cracked window onto your bare chest,
wrapping your bare breast in a blue glow
like it does the crest of the mountain, a convenient twenty minute drive away.
Yet here I am, placed perfectly parallel on a disheveled mattress,
Skillfully settled between your naked body and a clothing adorned floor,
hiding from your view my wet cheeks and misty eyes so that I won’t have to explain why the sight of you
does to me what lightning does to trees.

her eyes were so warm
I swear they could melt steel

your clothing fills the space on my floor
with such defined intention
like that of a form cast onto an abstract canvas
perfectly articulating and punctuating
wordless conversations from the night before

first you began to love me
slowly, ever so slightly
and then
suddenly, violently
like a wave that has been waiting
centuries to crash

on that last drive home
down that same crowded road I'd driven a million times
I prayed for red lights
and cursed the new hotel
that dared to alter the skyline
I'd been staring at for ten years
and wondered what else would be different
when I came back
I wondered if I would come back

the sky began pushing out the june air like it was
a visitor who had long outworn his welcome
and pushed us along with it.

and so with grace she parted with us
and welcomed july like a lost lover.

it's like she knew that whatever we would grow
would never fit comfortably in the heat of mid summer
and was better suited for the dew drowned mornings of september.
like she had a premonition that the shape of us
would quickly outgrow the box we spent two months apart building.

and so with a slight breath
she introduced us to a late summer wind
carrying both a silence and a secret that neither of us
yet had the ears to hear.