The Ether

To let you love me, was to let me love myself
– a thought that came to fruition as the physical
memories distorted themselves into fixtures of light.
Fragmented into two distinct distillations is
my disjunct recollection of what happened in July.

I have a trifling tendency to remember the
Good Times. Like when we explored your room
Tentatively, propped up awkwardly because
We were prisoners in bashful bodies
limbs bruised from the weight of our anxieties.
Even then, I said, romantic camaraderie is
stored in these spineless moments when at
any time I could reach my hand over to sooth the
palpable distance and discover
me as I am to you, you as you are to me.

I wish I could say I was more self-assured when I reached you
It’d be a partial lie, and I cannot bear any more omittances of truth.
Though I wonder if our beauty lie in partiality, the omittance of labels,
the very soft sway between love lost to love long. But remaining there,
beckoning sweet romance out of a sour reality would omit the Bad Times.

To let you leave me, was to let me leave myself
– a thought that emerged as two lone butterflies
wrapped their gangly amber arms around my finger
before rearing their canines to carve a hole in my chest
until it lay bare, coffined and cocooned, under a
mysterious abalone fog that nurtured the city that day.

In August, the Bad Times commenced.