but you really must know,

he leaves this note:

you looked lovely last night. you

really took my breath

into the midnight blue

and the atmosphere above. it’s not

a lie, and i’m sincerely

sorry speaking surreptitiously solemnly to someone superior as i am

now.

i can still taste your ash on my lips,

liquor in my mouth,

feel your scars in my arms. you

are lovely, roses

bloom from your ribcage –

you are not as fragile as you believe

yourself to be. a world exists

in your clandestine smiles

(you think no one sees, but i do),

in the nape of your neck, lined with silver in the

dim tea lights. you are a world, underwater but not

inundated, atlantis

above ground, plus all the wonder. the stars shimmer beneath your fingertips,

infernos of the stuff of supernovas,

imploding. but you are no

disaster zone,

life pulses in the cavity

beneath your lungs, you are

alive,

you are

breathing,

you are

existing, maybe

not so much

living, but you are here

with me,

and that is what must be held dear, the state of companionship at

two a.m when

you swore i’d never come, but i

did. so: this is us, outlined by early morning alcohol, over

a broad city of skyscrapers, budding

fireflies. you are

crying,

you say

you are

exploding

caving

decaying on the

inside, no one sees, no one cares. this is some sad state of mother nature,

the real fault of the earth, lying between tectonic plates, waiting to rupture the

oceans. this is some

inconvenient truth, you treat it as, you say to me

forget it.

(like it is easy for me to forget

your sadness.

it

is never

easy to forget

your sadness.)

you wipe your eyes, some liquor stinging

burning the back of your throat.

it is not over, it will

never really

be,

we know.

no one, you say,

no one

cries in the evenings,

six o’clock and dark

as tar. but, i say, i know, and it pulses within me

like your heart in the cavity beneath your lungs,

real as the roses

blooming in your ribcage.

you are not

no

one.