once

A locket of hair still bright with summer tied with a blue
ribbon. Polaroids overexposed, your dress an aurora
around your shadowed shape your hair laughing. Mixtapes
just because some songs have to be given and kept.
Postcards scribbled in the haste of some great adventure.


Rainy hours spent in the green vinyl back seat, we
glowed with the cherry of cigarettes, the warmth of the
stereo, and a paper bagged bottle. I was an easy escape
but not enough, you were waiting, passing time until
the departure gate opened up. We were already extinct
when a blazing August weakened into September, the
nights finally seem dark as if trees hold daylight until the
last leaf falls.


All my words were faded with the past, pale against your
new world, so I kept them to myself




.