Bushes
Do you remember the first time you forgot to wish me happy birthday?
I do.
I remember because
I wanted a cat and a kindle; it’s what I told everyone.
But I remember waking up and thinking
Has he thought of me today yet?
I remember anticipating your words and your wishes, forming like rose bushes around my ribs.
I remember thinking, if I plucked the thorns and pricked my hands, is there any chance that we can walk together again?
Talk and laugh together again? Say things that tasted like summer days, and exchange smiles that counted for more than promises that never stays. I wanted to know
What happened to the mind that never forgot
How many lines were written on my hands,
Or how many lashes have fallen to my cheeks, only to be swept up with my fingers to lessen how many more years until we see each other again.
Remember that letter I wrote to you? The one you lost right around the same time when I was about ready to say goodbye and you said I love you, but not to me anymore because you’ve found another one and I thought I would too, but I love you’s are hard to come by nowadays.
Nowadays, I only search for you.
Wherever I go, I try to find the same kindness that used to live in your eyes,
The one where my old house used to stand
Decorated with nothing but the blue sky and petals and you pasted your footprints all over it until it became ours.
And at night when the stars would come out, remember how we’d fish for them so we can hang it up on our ceilings, in case it gets cloudy during the day, and we’re not even afraid of the dark.
We just both liked to make them fall because fallen stars don’t happen often enough and we needed days to last more than a lifetime or two
I wonder maybe I never said it enough
That I would swim across oceans for you.
But it’s too late now. I’ve been growing gardens in my chest
And my heart is heaping with roses I cannot contain.
Bushes after bushes after bushes
Soon enough, I’ll only be breathing nothing but pollens
And I’ll still be missing you.