The Seasons Are Sweeping Through

The seasons are sweeping through my room like I left the patio door wide open.

I'm sad to leave behind these walls I’ve just recently become friends with.

The people around me become so real at moments, I can’t seem to find my throat. I end up crawling through their bodies without intending to end up there. I end up inside of someone’s heart, soaking up the dark place they hate the most, intertwining, spindling, hiding my eyes so I don’t have to look at the way they’re peering in at themselves.

Sometimes I look at myself the way I look at an old man eating alone.

Sometimes I look at myself the way I look at a young girl who decides to speak first in class when she usually never does.

Sometimes I fall asleep on the couch, so quickly, when I’m not supposed to, when I don’t have time.

Sometimes I stay awake on my balcony until the sun comes up.

I wonder what you are doing, mostly at night, when I sit on my bed, beside my lamp. Sometimes, you would stay up so late, even when you worked so early. Sometimes, you would decide it was time for bed an hour after I walked through your door. You were unpredictable, I always wondered.

I wonder if you are awake now, on your balcony, smoking a joint.

You were the first person I ever created an intimate routine with. The first person I was able to begin to quietly count years on the fingers behind my back, with.

I think about the next time I will see you, if it will happen at a grocery store. I wonder what you will be wearing, what I will be wearing, if I will be alone, if you will be alone, if maybe we’ve walked right past each other already and haven’t noticed.

I look for your license plate while I drive.

I pretend to tell you what’s new, in my mind, because so much has changed.

I wonder what’s new with you.

I imagine the new home I will live in, in twenty four days, by myself. I wonder what it will feel like to make my bed, to curl up, to kiss my window good night.

I wonder what it will feel like to dance alone in my new kitchen, to pour a glass of red wine and sit on an unfamiliar floor.

There were so many coincidences I never saw coming, a year ago. So many soft hands and comforting voices I didn’t know existed yet. One of them I found inside of myself, over and over again, in different rooms, at different hours of the day. She always broke like a full moon, all at once, never slowly. She gets stuck in the mud inside of me sometimes. I understand, I don’t blame her, I can be hurtful, convincing, I can build walls, roofs, doors, out of nothing. I can shut her out with such ease, I forget what her voice ever sounded like.

I’m afraid to see in other people what I see in myself sometimes.

I can feel energy like a river, like when I look away, your body looks away, like when my laugh is faltered and flat and dying, and my eyes don’t hold anything, I can’t hear what you’re saying. Like when you make yourself larger for me, but the wind flows through you, and it blows into me.

It blows me away.