i rake the leaves of what we had
stuck between paragraphs of what we could have been
the sentences we started
and the words we somehow left between them
i find myself here by where i sit
watching the mountains move in the distance
how the trees bend slightly with the evening
how i cherish
the songs the birds make in the eve
when the moon begins to rise
and the daylight folds beneath it
and i
feel everything
i take from what i know
and sometimes i don’t know what i think
i let the thoughts move through me
without asking where they belong
i wait for this moment
a little too long
and when it finally reaches me
it hits softer but somehow harder
than what i thought
like something gentle
can still leave a bruise
the ocean pulls
a little harder today
and i find myself down here
where the waves sing
the blues against the shore
where the water reaches for my feet
and leaves before i can feel it fully
like everything beautiful
knows when to move
what a calmness
i breathe deeply
like how i felt
before time could exist
between us
before clocks had anything
to measure
like the nights
where everything became daring
and the air felt warmer around you
and i listened for little words
hidden between conversations
the ones that sat behind your teeth
the ones i could almost hear
but you never quite said
the droplets fall along my shower door
slowly finding each other
before disappearing beneath the glass
and i think i feel you somewhere
thinking about me
maybe in a room with the lights turned low
maybe somewhere between sleep and memory
but this is a lie i tell myself
because time doesn’t feel
and distance doesn’t wonder
we just pull in different directions
hoping somehow
the current knows better than we do
hoping wherever it takes us
will eventually make sense
and i think of nights in my past
how april could pull
just as fast as we did
how spring came through the windows
and everything felt possible
how months become memories
before we even realize
we are standing inside them
how one ordinary night
can live in you for years
i think of time
i wish i could fold it
i wish i could keep it
i wish i could take certain hours
and place them somewhere safe
between books on shelves
between photographs and old receipts
somewhere they could exist
without having to end
i wish i could take time
for what it is
and not always for what it was
i miss things
more often than i don’t
the people
the places
the versions of myself
that only existed beside them
and resistance is hard
when memory makes everything
feel close enough to touch
when a song can open a room
i haven’t stood in for years
and suddenly
i am there again
because sometimes time does work
sometimes distance makes sense
sometimes the ocean pulls something away
only to leave something softer behind
and sometimes everything finds
exactly where it was meant to be
and sometimes
we only wish it could
but maybe there is beauty in that too
in knowing something moved you enough
to still feel its shape
after all this time
to remember how it touched you
without asking it to return
because not everything we miss
was meant to come back
some things were only meant
to make the time we had
feel longer than it was