The End

Do you remember it was

you and me and

no one else.

It was strawberry picking and

eternal summers with our

toes in the lake.

It was turning twenty and

feeding birds with our bare fingers,

buying your first car

and living on a street named

Carriage.

And then it was fall and

seeing you through a scope was

sufficient and we could only speak for

fifteen minutes before you went to bed,

woke up to work your nine to five,

and then spoke of politics instead

of asking me about

my day.

And then it was

winter with our first kiss

in the car.

“You’re going to kill us,”

I said, and listening to a song about

our first love.

It was

killing time to kill time,

and all of the particulars,

then honey butter and

being just friends.

And then it was

quiet and lonely,

learning how to love a ghost

on my own.

It was realizing that

I loved him when he

told me to go upstairs where

it was safe, but that

that boy no longer existed and

in his place, a man with a

name like Crow.

It became

learning to be at peace with myself

when I could not sleep

and finding solace in strangers

whom reminded me of

my first love.

It turned into

reading your letters until

I knew them by rote,

how you said we were

not healthy for each other

and the way I

hated you for that.

It became

missing my best friend and

my own intransigence that

could not bare the thought of

being alone;

my own obduracy that

resisted change and

romanticized the man whom

studied tax.