i can feel it getting colder

i watch lovers turn to strangers

and it puts things in perspective

i didn’t believe in ghosts until i could still feel you after you were gone

i put the kettle on but it never goes off

and the calendar is thinning like the time

since i last touched you

looked at you

i usually hate change

but it’s you that’s changing these days

and i love you

it’s all so conflicting

my hair is growing longer

you said i looked like rapunzel  

but that was when our clothes stuck to our bodies

and now the leaves are falling

and i’m left clutching these books

trying to find what i need in them

***** the novels i read at midnight

it’s you i want

i’m putting on sweaters

i dont mind the weather

but i used to stay warm with you

and things hurt worse than they used to

replaying the things you breathed into me so many months ago

if you wondered why i never used your name

in those poems that i wrote

it’s because i used love as an excuse to be shy

i’m struggling to find hidden meanings in forced glances

but life is not a mystery and we aren’t all just stories

i wash the blood off my hands

to get rid of the guilt

but the bruises from the fall remain

and my knees look like they would break in half

if you looked at me again

They round the tip of the hill jogging-
Him; 58, smiling, cheering her on.
Her; a student, beautiful in every regard-
words, body, face and mind,
an asthmatic
one of the worst cases I've seen.
She's choking on something,
or perhaps, the absence of something.
tears are welling up in her eyes and occasionally letting themselves go

Her name is strength

fighting to climb that last bit of hill without falling over
telling him every time he asks if she needs to stop
that she doesn't.

She crosses the line and we go inside
she falls asleep for a few minutes sitting there on the bleachers
letting her breathing return to normal.