at the start, it was beautiful
inside jokes, dreaming of london and manhattan like they offered us answers to questions we never asked, shared poetry at moonlight hours, loudest cheers in the stadium for simply standing on two feet when the world spun too quickly
we were beautiful
somewhere down the line that got lost and the serpents slithered into the unwatched gates and sunk their unforgiving fangs into the whitest doves that flew in this beautiful kingdom we had created way before we were seventeen and had a clue what would become of us
you blamed me for the invasion
I was too blind to see all the flags nearly flying off the poles from the northern winds that carried through the land and brought in cold like we’ve never felt before as it found a new home in the layers of tanned skin and salted caramel smelling hair which hadn’t been prepared for the ice out
I begged for a better ending to our story
when everyone asks, you’ll never admit that I was the one who left first, will you? that I recognized the toxicity in my blood and called it even when I laid my weapons down and agreed to the silence
because you want to direct every narrative even when the pages are too dry and brittle
the ink isn’t isn’t even legible anymore
it’ll hurt, yes, never knowing what became of you, if the internship is all you dreamed of and more, if you ever take that trip to the beach with your mom and sister, get the pharmacist job you’ve been talking about since we were eighteen, if you regret the lily tattoo you got because of me, did you get out of the city you said was melting under the devils thumb?
do you know I hope you’re happy?
