i want your flowers like babies want god's love

I will be sad not to spend the fall with you. I drive down these streets, each of which is a memory of you. Roots force their way through the hardened tar, leaves coat my car and like incessant papercuts I am reminded of every memory of you, every memory I had yet to make and now never will. And as I watch the colours fade I will imagine you were there with me, leaning against the white bark of an ancient tree.

I will be sad to spend winter alone. It's as cold as cancer here in those months, and I will be sad not find myself wrapped up in your warmth in the mornings. I will regret that you made me see a season of my life in black and white. I may try thaw your heart by the fire while mine breaks like ice, but when I look outside I will be reminded of the fact that everything is dead.

I will be sad not to start afresh with you. I will be blind to new life, turn my back on the endless potential of new beginnings and I will not notice the new colours surrounding me. I will hate myself every day for wanting your flowers, and every day I will mourn that they are dead.

I will, perchance, fall in love with summer once more. And I will be sad to know it will end the same way. In the battle for love, I will die again. But more tragic than anything else is that it will not be worth dying for.

There is no other you.

i set fire fire to the rain

The arum lilies had gone limp from the cold that had started to settle in. Old people sat on their porches with the dying rays of sunshine accentuating each wrinkled path of their faces with its false promise of warmth. They wrapped themselves in blankets and inhaled the frosted air in measured breaths, waiting for the nothingness to take over.

I called you from upstairs. I shouted. Furiously. Desperately. I called your name and battled the wind that snatched my words away.

‘’I rebuilt the fort!”

I stood at the top of the stairs and called and cried, holding out my hand as you battled your way up.

“Hurry! Grab my hand! Love is coming.”

It loomed behind you, a great cloud threatening to swallow us both. I held out my hand as far as I could, screaming your name as it reached up and tugged at your ankles. You climbed and I reached and we fought so desperately to run away from it.

And finally, we were safe. I had built a fort and we huddled inside, safe from love. We played cards and lit candles, we laughed and we lay together.

But we made no memories. We shared no songs which would someday pierce our very souls with their shrill falseness. We didn’t need to waste paper writing letters which we would later burn. We did not see sights and travel the world together. We did not tell all of our friends about each other and we had no need to someday explain to them that, no, he wasn’t ‘the one’. We did not buy gifts with which we would later pollute the ocean as we flung them into high tide, the waves crashing into our tears. We did not wear each other’s clothes, only to feel naked when they were taken back. We did not set alarm clocks that would remind us of each other every hour of every day after we parted.

We did not part. We stayed, safe from love and the eventual winter it would send to kill us. We stayed side by side, forever apart. And we never had to say goodbye.