the slow art of breathing bitter

Remember Me Not

She walks by my side, 

holding my hand tight

in the silver-blue night.

The wind is gentle and warm

and smells like her—

she drives me insane; oh, I'm in love.

But my lips are sealed with bitter asphalt,

and I can't sing or talk.

I can't say how much of her heart

I want to make mine;

it's a typical mid-summer love

colored in dreams of escaped days.

She waves me goodbye and 

fades into the whistling dark.

We haven't learned to wait.

I pull out my notebook and write about her.

But it falls in a blink of an eye;

I can't write how much I'm in love with her.

Yet, I've been writing love poems

about being unloved.

Oh, darling, never remember me when dark growls

at your feet or near your door;

when the street lights go off, and the crashing waves smile—

never think of me, my girl.

Think of the day Atlantis fell, and we rose;

dead bodies mingled in sorrow

as a familiar figure passed by in the sea of uncertainty.

For I ended the poetry with no words;

bloodstained letters and flecks of love.

I will look up at you

from the abysmal depths of unloving you.

Or perhaps in the lost fields of dandelions and moondust.

Our constellation will remain incomplete, untouched.

The soft soil will unravel the mysteries I kept closer,

too close to my heart.

It's not raining anymore here.

But something washes past her heart—it's grey.

Her eyes are the haziest to me,

too grey in this dark.

She's walking down the burnt brown lane

alone, spilling the colors of my dream.

Sunburnt streets get lulled to sleep as her thoughts

swallow the ocean of cities and faces.

Her hand's cold—paper cuts by a blade.

Time waits for the first time for us to fly closer.

The colors sway in the wind; our dreams get brighter.

But we haven't learned to wait, dear.

We've only known how to burn the fleshes

of our memories and stain them in rose red;

We've only learned to return home in bloodless limbs

and forgive the world in oblivion.

My notebook is colored in a cluster

of silver stars and yellow lights that smile at her.

It's too cold here, darling.

Never remember me ever.