I still collect pennies of you in mason jars
The lid laced tight so as not to allow any sunshine to escape
The whispers of wanderings
We once traveled through
I still send you light
I will search for you on train platforms
In each melody that spills from my mind
I dreamt you could hear me
When I whisper to the city lights with each exhalation of frosty breath
I felt you were real again.
Portraits of promises feigning flutters of hope
I have a collection of things that you love
Or loved
You say we’re strangers now, but if I close my eyes and hold real still
I can still feel the flutter of your heart under my palm, so innocent against your chiseled chest
Each beat filling the rhythm of the melody of saving you from yourself
Those sweet summer nights drawing dew
So at home in the drum of your pulse
The spine of Salinger turned over in our palms as you told me
That these stories changed your life
I read them cover to cover
Lingered in each word
For the mere fact that your eyes owned this prose
I read them cover to cover
To show you how your life changed my story
Your stories are still my favorites
The ones you told me in a hushed voice and those we told together, our hopes and hearts singing midnight hymns
I read them in the corners of my mind where my heart won't hear and allow abandoned hopes to wreak havoc
There are other stories
A box of photographs
A reel of black and white film
Lost laughter settling in the booming silence of my ear drums--
I miss you.
Do you remember that night we laid on the dock, counting shooting stars?
Twenty-two.
I counted twenty-two, my lucky number
I dreamt they could fall to kiss our foreheads and maybe give me reason to remember you loved me
No matter how far inside yourself you hid
I could still crawl through the crook of the old willow tree
Climb in and wrap myself up tight
It was the only way I would fit.
I miss you.
Sometimes I sit here and wait for you
Our old wooden foot bridge
Our peak of the mountain
Where you were Jack holding my arms outspread
And if you jumped I jumped too
I still collect pennies of you
When I find them upside-down, as I find they always are
I turn them over
So that perhaps when I walk by the next time
I can follow my Hansel and Gretel trail of lucky copper sunbeams
Know that even after all of our stories
Have realized they are that and nothing more,
You still send me light too