"..Electricity and all colors were mine.."

He put me in photo albums;

Said,

“this is my favorite page.”

Three photos:

one sunset that made a melancholy town somewhat of a wonder, even for a few brief moment

one epic day his life was saved after a broken heart

one of him and I.

And, like most things in my life, parts of me feel I don’t deserve to occupy that space

*

I dwelled there, in his life like those photos, but like them they are just moments in time, forgotten, dusty with new experiences, I’m fading like those squares of paper in sunlight, out of his life quickly.

I can feel myself giving happy couples who share their dinners dirty looks, scowls of jealously of something I once had.

Or maybe I never had anything.

The night before I left he drank too much and flirted with boys. I wasn’t at the center of his world anymore, and I wouldn’t be from there on, and I knew. So I told him I was just going to go, expected him to chase after me because most boys would have.

But he is not most boys.

Fits of passion were ours every night for a short intense month before I moved on to a new life. I remember thinking…this is bad…why are you doing this to yourself when you’re about to move on?

So instead we spent nights exploring things new to both of us. His kiss was hesitant at first, unsure and unfamiliar with the taste of a woman, but he grew hungrier for it, insatiable and I loved consuming him.

*

“I’ve only read this poem aloud to one other person.”

I’m lying next to him, breathless and waiting for the first words. He flips open to a section of an old book with a damaged spine and stained pages, a photograph bookmarks it, a photograph I had taken with my Polaroid, of him. He cradles the book in his palms, almost as if he is holding a baby chick or delicate egg before breaking it into a pan before poaching. His fingers are nimble and careful, the way they are with cooking, and holding chopsticks, the same way they are when he holds pieces of fish between them to feed me. He is grace incarnate.

*

And now I’m angry, I’m sad and angry. Angry that the things I want to write about, I cannot find the eloquence to, but with him, words flow like blood from a fresh wound, in the way blood does, pulsing from an open gash where the heart pumps it through the body and out past severed skin.