star

Give the lights a sickly yellow glow

Let me reflect 

The scribbled-on stall doors and brightly-colored posters

Framing her face, to remind her 

I remember taking Polaroids with you

In the driveway of the house you’ve now sold

On a grey afternoon that looked like night

In the photos. We’d wait impatiently

you should be an image in stained-glass windows 

the same ones you trace with your eyes every sunday 

while hymns echo in your ears, words 

you've known so long you forget the meaning. 

Her room smelled of lavender and gardenias

As we lay under silky rays of sun

And danced around the truth in long, snaking sentences,

Words falling over one another until they

Became nothing, only syllables

and the pale pink is fading from the morning sky

the same way the words from the song i sang about you

under my misty-cold breath

died on my lips. i wonder if i would've waited forever,

I haven’t been to upstate New York since I was ten years old and we drove away from our house there without looking back.