Runoff

The days go by in a steady cadence, like a heartbeat, or a horror film. They seem redundant and unnecessary only because you are absent from them. I'm jealous of the people who pass you in the streets, who sit behind you in class, who walk by you in the gym. They get to see you living your life, just being a person. And they can note your beauty, passively - file you away in their mental archive for the day. They don't have to hang on to your image in a panic like I do when I'm not sure when I'll get to do it again. That is fate's cruelty. My afternoons are pools filled with whatever makes up your blue, blue eyes, but I still come home parched every night. No wonder, when you've got a face like the sea and I've got a heart like a sponge.

And if I could jump into your pond for one second, I wouldn't even try to hold my head above the surface; I would just learn to breathe underwater. But right now I'm out of breath when yours gets deeper and deeper as you fall into a comatose sleep after dark. My thoughts speak with yours long after our mouths fall asleep. We clench sleep like soap suds in wet fingers. Every night is too slippery to hang on to. And if someone were to listen to me talk in my sleep all they would hear is the slow trickle of your name. Me, as I pull you out from your cataloged file, water-marked "My Favorite Daydream". What we have here is the universe's express consent and now I get to see your face alongside the sunshine every morning.

And if there is a God, then He watches us, scotch in His grimaced hand, with palpable envy.