Your Hair
I knew he was it when the world
still fit inside a bowling ball,
his bed pressed in the crook,
dead ladybugs strewn on the window sill.
Parsley grew from his fingers,
paperback pages soft with use.
I shredded the carrots.
I was a guest,
a ghost with warm hands.
We caught a fish once.
No one told us how.
We stabbed it between the eyes.
It bled—
a mess.
We laughed.
Everything was like that.
His house was cluttered,
mine was too.
Books, bottles,
loose change in coffee cups.
It felt like something—
recognition, or ruin.
He read my words.
Marked them gently,
sharp red and soft voice.
He loved me.
Not well.
I loved him.
Not kindly.
I gave him a bloody nose,
He made me a lime spritz.
We laughed.
Years passed in pieces.
On.
Off.
The weight of timing.
The ache of almost.
Then:
his hair was long.
Tied back.
Loose strands at his temples.
We spoke like people
who once lived through a storm
and now only feel the damp in our bones.
We did not return,
not really.
But for a moment,
we remembered how.
I looked at him.
So much to say.
But only:
“Your hair.”
