Icy Breaths

Let us exchange the exhale
between burgundy sheets of memory.
The air is Toledo cold
and your room has no carpet yet.
That ache you feel is January
when the Lasts will come.

Panera conversations grow stale
after Halloween lessons
and unwatched Apatow.
Fiction and dress up
are all I ever claimed it to be,
but the heat was real for you.
Every fingertip held a furnace.
You believed in an alchemy
that could melt concrete
into something more than sand.
You wanted a world
where the balloons were tame.
But, I could not build foundations
from ash, or warm from the chill.

Which leaves us the inhale,
the next breath on distant air.
Conversations like stale sushi.
Pillowcases stained with painted reminders
Our mistakes become mirrored
because broken hearts are falling dominoes.
Left with few options,
we keep breathing.

  • March 30, 2011