Bring Me To October
In the quiet categories of my mind
I have a place and time for everything.
And everyone.
My conscious compartments exist and fill and wear through these decades
as they order the sounds of my memories.
A box for you.
Tinny piano music and swollen symphonies
Muffled by a crumbling lid,
while a thousand songs are perched to
Tumble
Out.
Along with them, wrapped in tendrils of delicate grey-blue smoke,
Paper fortunes
A camera lens
Broken piano keys
A stolen kiss, wanton touch
All things azure
A multitude of voices
The laughter.
And the love.
It all has an air of the first day of school.
The newness and uncertainty,
Intertwined with familiarity and the same.
It has a smell, love.
The ground covered in crackling pages,
Brown and orange, red and yellow
Tumbling along the gravel pathway
As they fall from the trees.
Crunching them into the ground with our feet,
We relish in the scent of the crisp air, the thin clouds, the cooling dirt.
Autumn’s wind smells like us.
Fire smells like us.
Its smoke belonged to us.
The mirror of adolescence separated by small distance and little time,
And without permission, you also imagined our walk to school together.
I can see it behind your eyes.
Each refraction, a fig on a tree.
And like those Autumn days, mercurial as only they know to be,
So are we.
We said simpatico, we meant twin flame.
Heavy as metal, less than air.
Those pages swept from the ground as night gets colder.
The selfishness as we join in warmth.
With my lips to your ear,
I whisper a promise.
A winter girl promise.
And frozen tears give way to Spring,
But I am not there.
Years passed while we wandered.
Once I thought I saw you laying in the road.
For a moment I thought we were lost in those same woods,
but I woke up in my room.
How many stars in how many lifetimes aligned?
Star paths cross again.
And the smells of earth and skin and smoke
Sit inside my chest until I choke.
There is no one else but us.
And we consume.
Standing on a ship.
I taste salt.
You have my damp hands.
Pressure on my third finger.
I gaze at your profile, blinded by the light.
A beautiful woman in a dripping gown
Sets the microphone to your lips.
And you say something and look into my eyes.
Peering down at me despite my heels, you smile.
I cannot speak.
I smooth out a blue cotton dress for a little girl.
A boy’s shadow flies across a table.
Wooden walls and tall windows.
A view of a lake.
Gardens and grass.
The chopping of wood and a wide brimmed sun hat.
Figs on a tree.
Somewhere along your way, I was real.
And for one moment,
I
was
almost
enough.
So close to October.
Your heel grinds into the gravel where you leave me,
Now just your path.
The insidious upturned corners of your mouth,
I swallow down the realization: you will use all of this.
Our stories
To the delight of others.
Their entertainment at my loss
That I may instill a sense of magic in you.
My fate as the sacrificial lamb is
A cosmic joke,
An utter mockery
Of us.
The box, once sturdy, neatly packed,
Moves in my mind like a dervish.
A lost backpack.
Seasickness.
A broken golden man.
Small coffins.
Dead flowers, everywhere.
Pragmatism prevails.
The parcel in its place.
A place which ought to be closer to the darkest reaches of my mind;
Instead behind my mind’s eye with its prismatic effect and light.
So that you may look into it.
Always.
And as I do, promise me you will keep me.
Allow me to haunt you in the deepest recess.
Impress upon me your inability to forget.
Convince me of your desire to own me.
Visit me in the corridors.
Imagine me, your safety.
Lift us up behind your azure eyes, along with my hips,
and swear with your scars that it was always me.
See me in your moments of weakness.
Give in to me when you feel strong.
And after you take me once again,
Before setting me behind you on your path,
Consider.
Then promise to bring me back to October.