Loving him was like capturing an evening sky during the very last moments of sunlight on an August night.
     Every light beam was as foggy and fleeting as the end of summer.  

Falling for him was a bittersweet pill
     faded pink like an evening sky in an Indian summer
     worn down like the patches on his jacket
It was a gradually discolored greying love, paradoxically bleak as dark storm clouds in springtime.
     nostalgic and elusive as the flicker and flame of a bright orange blaze with five seconds left before it drops beneath the green grassy mountains surrounding the tranquility of a small-town valley.
     Rising across the sea
          across the world
               much too far away from the microcosm containing my naïve and sheltered heart.
     Slipping right out of my grasp like raindrops
     Flitting away like a butterfly
          or better yet, like a restless heart.

     Falling out of sight like the way his hazel eyes dropped so effortlessly from my gaze
          Locking away my heart and making it look so easy
               so effortless
                    so seamless
                         so chic
                              so thoughtless
                                   to haunt me.

Whatever it was, I can’t name it.
Something all-encompassing, transcendent of the swirled around and tossed up, mixed together and scrambled apart scrapbook collages of love and lust, rearranged to reflect the contradictions of selflessness and hunger, estrangement and friendship, hope and compromise.
     Scalded by burning smoke and fire, desperate confusion, and the intuitive certainty that I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.
     The fulfillment of breathing in heartbreak like oxygen
          blissfully drinking that warm comfortable self-delusion like water.
     Anxiously overjoyed, overwhelmed with a false sense of newness
          of rekindles possibilities
               of foolishly renewed faith.
The absurd inconsistency between idealistic yearning
     and becoming forgotten as an old wrinkled flannel in the back of his closet.

The unnamed link between us was inexplicable as the speed of light
     enigmatic as the spans of time and space in which we dwell
          like a gravitational pull
               or divinity itself.

But he broke the spell just the same.
So deliberately.
So cool and calculated and hopelessly endearing as always.

The nature of his love was ephemeral as it was intense.
Incongruent as his sleepily electric presence.
His shy self-assuredness.
His individuality in a sea of identical non-conformists.
The way he subverted subversion.
His enviably confident quiet, his silent strength, his invisible yet unmistakable power.
His unforgettable imprints on my heart.
The way that I could still trace the outlines of his every tattoo in my sleep.
The way that I could still locate every rip on his skinny black jeans with my eyes closed.
The way that I can still replay his gentle laugh from memory and recite his hopes and dreams into the empty wind.
The way that I still think of him when I hear his favorite song, still hope to see him again every time I know I won’t, still write poetry about him while he writes songs about everything in a world where the door was open wide for me before slamming, shutting, locking.

The way that I somehow knew him before I ever even met him, before I knew his name or heard his voice or learned that anybody’s eyes could dance with such luminance.
The way that I can’t understand how a multiverse ever existed in which I lived and breathed without knowing his smile, his soul, his mind, his delicate frame, the kind sensitivity in his voice, his modestly overwhelming spirit.
     A multiverse in which I never knew the vintage Sharpie sketches on his oldest pair of Vans
     in which I never admired his smooth pale skin contrasting against the backdrop of his midnight black hair
     in which I never imagined that anyone could perfuse my lungs with such wildly aromatic romanticism while simultaneously taking all of it away.

The way his eyes were like open books with secrets scribbled on every page.
Every single scary beautiful maddening reason not to fall in love.

His slender hand slipped out of mine before I could notice his absence. 
His love for me falling through the cracks in the heart that I gave to him.
Each crack so subtle.
Too subtle for me to ever suspect the inconspicuous breaking of an uncontrollably intoxicated heart.
A formerly beating heart turned to stone by the destructive hurricane of his picture-perfect finitely requited love of the dreams I drew in dynamic neons and spring pastels.
     Candy-coated essence of flawlessness.
     Wish upon a shimmering star.
He was the sugary sweet epitome of my technicolor rainbow visions. 

I never knew about its fixed rations
     its sensitivity to each passing second
          its intrinsic intertwinement with a ticking time bomb.
The embedded clock, the inherent vanishing act of love, the inevitable ghosts of who we were in one tiny tailor-made moment. 
Shadows of two divergent spirits.
Briefly collided.
A chemical reaction frozen in time.

I should have known that the sun sets on the brightest of fairytales. 

     hearts travel
          castles crumble
               night settles in.

     A September sunset lasts not three minutes.
Falling in love with him was like watching the sunset.

Drinking coffee
   Early fall
Children splash
   In the fountains
Lively

I watch
   the tiny little waterfalls
Sprouting up
   and down
up
   down
up
   down.

Bird flies past
   Man in burgundy sweater
Food truck
   Tourists with cameras posing
Languages I don’t understand

I breathe in the city in
   before I’m gone.

I watch the fountains make puddles
   before they are paved over
   with an ice-skating rink
   soon.

Inhaling the scent of the hazelnut
   in my coffee
   and exhaling
inhale
   exhale
 inhale
   exhale.

The scent of the last few months
   breathe it in
   breathe it out
in
   out
in
   out.
and then I will leave.

Goodbye everything
   everyone
Even though I’ve just begun.

I just got here.
   We all did.
But once you leave your nest
   wherever you fly
   wherever you land
that becomes your new nest.
Human restlessness.
   I suppose.

So now we all spread out like spiders
   spinning a web
a map of giant thread
   bigger
      bigger
         bigger.
Until our threads spin in directions so far apart
   that we can’t even see each other anymore.

tokyo paris new york miami los angeles hong kong liverpool dublin rome london hawaii bali
and a remote village in Australia.
   And everywhere but here.

Sometimes I wonder if anybody understands this city like I do.
   The spirit infused into every single crumbling brick
the bricks that constitute each and every overlooked old building
   It’s an underdog of a city.
   I don’t know if anybody understands.

Girls kiss on rainbow-lined streets
   Couples lock eyes for the first time in the Saturday night darkness of those characteristically lovely tiny beautifully outdated filthy  joy-filled basements
Vanilla cupcakes smell like home in a coffee shop with throw pillows on the couch and Bon Iver on the radio
   where lonely splintered hearts seek refuge.

My coffee is lukewarm now
   Baby Siberian Husky prances in a plush pillow of grass
beneath a coveted tree.
Boy in blue cardigan interlocks hand with girl in red dress
   First date

Taking in the green the red the orange the yellow
   of every last leaf
   before it all turns to snow.

The final scene of a movie
   the happy ending
the resolution
   and the long-overdue kiss.
It almost never happens beneath the lights of this city.
   but it should.
Does anybody else understand this?
   a tossed-aside town
   forgotten and underrated
   filled with magic.

I see what nobody else seems to.
   It fills my lungs and my every bone
and reaches my taste-buds
   dissolving on my tongue
like a snowflake made of sugar in December.

A group of children walking past
   Now adults
   technically
Living and loving and learning

I want to say to them
   don’t become jaded
  vulnerability is strength

And I also want to say that I know what’s going to happen
   and that it will be beautiful. tragic. romantic .transformative…
   But I don’t.
   I can’t.

Trying not to think about how quickly life moves
   drinking in the October air
Watching a girl in blue jeans walking with a boy in a vintage jacket
   and they’re young.
another bird passes
   my coffee is cold now.

A classic Steinway
his family heirloom
sits in the basement
unfinished and dusty underground.
He plays love songs while she hangs tapestry
playing complicated scales while she covers the colorless floor in rugs and picnic blankets
tye-dye and argyle and neon plaid.

A mouse beneath the oven and a girl who will hold your hand through everything and encourage your whimsical ways.
Ramen noodles for dinner and a boy who lives to see you smile.
Baking brownies on a Tuesday night
classical music on a rainy afternoon
the peaceful way he sleeps.

He plays all their favorite records in this little cabin of a home
dancing together in this rickety hallway.
The clicks of her heels
of the black shoes she gave him last year.
The skirt of her dress twirling
spinning
her hand held in his.
Pulling her close to him
her right foot lightly touching his left.
Dancing atop the loosest floorboard
the most imperfect.
Tempting fate on that scratched up brown floor
challenging it with love.