A Close Reading

A Close Reading

Our love story was buried in someone else’s

Of men on cold winter nights

Of poems published and words that stayed in their boxes

A series of unintentions

My art hovered in the air like sadness

Begging for the end of July

And instead, the beginning of you

I saw you,

In people, in words, in foreign bedrooms

In the fear, in the excitement, the thrill of it all

In the secret and in the story

In the extended film scene that was ours

Because it explained us better than we could explain ourselves

I travel backwards in time with you

To last week, last month, last lifecycle

I rewind 23 years through ripped t-shirts and old photographs

Of 80s haircuts, 90s music, and girlfriends past

And suddenly I become something I have never even seen or heard of

Experience beyond body, being beyond self

When you follow me out at the end of the night

And wonder if I will return home with you

I think of the cobblestoned streets tucked away in old Philadelphia

How I got here

How your hands feel on the layers of my skin

How long it will be before you hold me again

And whether the streetlamps will stay awake long enough

To witness us in the morning