new year’s
In bed you lit tealights the color of sunrise, painting
the windowsill in shadow. Everything was beautiful
with someone beside you to see it. Remember this.
The lights of the trees blinked out, limbs stark and intricate
against the gray. How the world looks when the snow
has just finished falling. How they look at you
the first night you fall asleep together. It will never
be the same again. The stars aligned tonight
so you could have this: the open flame of a
bare back, the unspoken question of a spine
curled towards. Soon, you will never feel right
anywhere but in the basket of their stomach. Soon,
you will forget the way their collar smelled until
it startles you in a stranger’s aftershave,
a folded shirt for sale. Soon, there will be no need
for tealights. You will no longer be the comet
in the sky of their sleep. Remember this.
Write it down. You were always supposed to be
the historian, the one who learned by heart each
unfurled laugh, every fold of crow’s feet. When it is over,
you will wish the moon had never slipped back
into bed, quietly, as lovers do after a fight;
shifting together to accommodate an elbow,
a searching nose in the crook of a neck.
