he’d come home to.

At the center of our heartbreak is a summer day

set to melody, ten minutes of forevers,

climbing, climbing, climbing

until there’s nowhere left but

down.

No matter our role in the undoing

he didn’t have to leave like that.

YOU COOKED FOR ME

once, in the time that we were together. Pasta.

Vegetarian.

I leaned against your doorway, not yet comfortable

in any place that belonged to you, and said

how touched I was that you’d listened to my nervous

babble on our first date. No meat, but dairy is fine.

It felt like the kindest thing anyone had ever done

for me — mixing handmade pesto in a white bowl.

Clearing away a stack of unopened mail from a stool

so I could sit and watch the steam rise.

In retrospect I can see that you gave me very little

and I tried to build an entire future with it.

You must understand, I had never been remembered

like that, before.

With purpose. Without begging for it.

I took what I was offered and ran.

NICK CARRAWAY WAKES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, AND REACHES FOR A PEN

I wonder how this would’ve played out

if you’d known all along that I was going

to write about it. If you’d known my intention

was to expose the green light as metaphor, trip

over the white silk curtains,

would you have said my name any differently?

Ours was a story that begged for clarity.

While love was sleeping it was me that ripped

away the sheets and identified it as obsession.

I refuse to apologize for honesty even if all

it’s left me with are ghosts. Does it bring you back?

No. Does it accurately depict how much

I cared for you? Also no.

The signs that I should’ve noticed sooner have

followed me and I welcome their stare, so much

like yours, seeing a certain reliability in me

and never bothering to name it. So maybe I’m

too late. Maybe life is little more than a car crash or a

sweltering city but dammit, I loved you so much that I

made you the hero of the story rather than the fool.

I wrote you face-down in the pool and rowing into

the past, slow enough for me to catch the wake of

you, lapping against my chest like a grateful animal

or a current of grief.

You were the death of an ideal I’d never tasted but

dreamt of swimming across. I rue the hours I wasted

holding my breath for a fantasy. This was never

going to end the way I wanted it to.

I knew this, and still tried to give you an ending

worthy of history.

You died for love, like you’d always wanted.

Crimson enveloping your body in a cloud of

gunpowder and chlorine. Later,

Judgment and I would stand over your possessions