How many times I rode my bike past your apartment, tipped against the railing and tried
to see your prison from the inside. I had once known well that prison. I slept sweaty a few feet from you in the hottest of summers, the hottest of longing. Your eyes were
fire electric blue the day you dyed your hair white.
Come back.
He and I would talk, meet in public places and talk, go back to his new apartment he had gotten after I left him and cook dinner like the couple we once were. My hands knew him. In the morning I would nudge him to buzz me out the gate, and it killed a part of me each time because it framed in a truth we couldn't yet speak of.
Come back.
Sometimes it's in their eyes when I'm behind them in line at the cafe, it's speaking when they say "Hello, do you remember me?" or "How have you been?" It's played out in my fingers when I flip through your pictures now, pictures that are only a few weeks old. And you are gone.