We danced all night.
We drank all day.
We swam in the Mediterranean
naked.
We laughed at our lives.
My God, did we laugh.
And every moment
was a rooftop view.
In the sweat and the haze
and the salt and the sun;
I was free.
I was living.
I remember feeling alive, and
thinking to myself
“I should feel this way more often.”
Dark days passed,
slow.
I wasn’t
sure they would
when I was in them.
But winter
turned
to spring.
And just to walk
outside
some days,
was enough.
He was like a breath
of fresh air
the way he was always moving,
dancing,
singing, not well – but that wasn’t
the point, he said
as he laughed
rainbows
into my heart.
“I’m defenseless,” she said as she watered her plants.
“Against what?” her husband asked as
he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Time,” she said as she began to cry.
“Just time.”
“I used to dance
alone in my room, or spontaneously
in front of others.”
“That sounds nice,” he said.
“But today I realized
I have not danced in a long time.”
“Why did you stop?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I just forgot.”
“Forgot what?” he questioned.
“To feel.”
After you left
I slept in your old ratty t-shirt
for 41 days.
You know the one; grey with the small holes
in the left sleeve.
It saved me that first month.
Your scent made me feel like
you were still here.
41 days.
I believed you would come back.
Day 42.
I realized the only scent left on your shirt
was my own.
“why don’t you talk to me anymore?” she asked
her words cutting me as I read them.
I wanted to say, “because it’s too hard. because it hurts too much.
because I hate having to say goodbye again, and again.”
I wanted to say these things.
Instead, I said “because,
you don’t talk to me anymore either.”
