The wind is louder than the music tonight.
It drags its hands across the roofs,
through the trees,
through the hollow places between my ribs,
until every song becomes background noise
to something older,
something that has never learned
how to be quiet.
I stand outside,
porcelain skin collecting the evening
like a fragile cup.
The air smells of cigarettes
and my body lotion—
sweet and chemical,
the scent of a life brushing against another
for only a moment
before disappearing into the dark.
And suddenly I miss everyone.
The ones who left.
The ones who died.
The ones who are still alive somewhere
but no longer belong to my days.
I miss their laughter
in ways I cannot explain,
as if memory were a room
and I keep returning to find
the furniture covered in dust,
the windows shut,
their voices fading into the walls.
The wind keeps talking over the music.
Maybe it knows something.
Maybe it knows that every song ends,
every cigarette burns to a filter,
every bottle of lotion empties,
every body softens back into earth.
Maybe it knows
that one day my name will be spoken
for the last time.
That one day
this porcelain skin will crack,
these hands will let go of everything,
and the people who love me
will search for me in old photographs,
in forgotten messages,
in the smell of rain on a cold evening.
The thought should frighten me.
Instead,
I listen.
The music grows distant.
The wind grows louder.
And for a moment,
surrounded by ghosts,
by smoke,
by sweetness,
by all the people I cannot keep,
I feel strangely grateful
to have been here long enough
to miss them at all.
