[The first time I looked at you]

The first time I looked at you I thought of galaxies, as basic as it seemed. Starships and asteroids of emotion in your pupils. Our souls belong together, as if mine had loved yours since the beginning of the cosmos-- maybe we were from the same star.

No you didn’t seem like someone who’d offer me sunshine, and I adored that fact. You looked like someone who knew coffee stains well, someone who could pour over yellow plagued novels for hours. A boy who would take me to the outskirts of barbed wire fences just to show me the places cities would never illuminate. Someone who could show me every single crevice and corner of the dark room developing our memories in the center.

I learned about you, constantly scraping every single last ounce of alertness from myself to stay awake one more moment longer on the phone. Poured my affection into simple good morning texts. We both took the time to figure each other out, every single intrigue, satisfaction, and hate until we knew each other like the backs of our own palms.

But soon our relationship had a sour taste of perfidy. Every single shard of it began to peel off, like paper mache-- and on the day you asked me if I was seeing someone else I could’ve sworn it was like the sun began to set in your eyes. The man who took me to art museums just to kiss me between the paintings turned into a solid icicle that evening. Satiation took over him, and he never looked at me like I was somehow every calm beachside in the world. He no longer peered over at me and thought of the loving smell of someone’s home, nor did he think of the raucous laughter we shared. I could see in his basil eyes I’d become something so abhorrent in his universe.

And I shattered.

I couldn’t comprehend the fact I’d become someone he’d want to elude from. Stars rising around me just to watch me wail. I felt everything. Every single dark forest fabricated by man caving in on me. As if all the paintings in the museum whipped their heads around to face me, I quivered. I hesitated to touch my dry skin knowing you’d touched it before. I was hoarse for days from the sorrow I’d howl to crescents. The peck pecks of scraping crimson polish off my nails. The ebony hair my ancestors praise swept across the floor, strands trapped underneath the blunt ends of a broomstick.

Because of you my face is no longer characterized by the sun’s grateful kisses, nor is it any longer the thrill of seeing who can touch the bottom of the pool first-- with trickles of endless daylight peeking through the water. My thighs thick as creamy pillars and doe-like eyes upturned towards the clouds.

But now my fingertips chilly, cheeks and physique emaciated-- hollow like dark wine stained barrels as my mother told me so. I stared whorls of smoke into strangers’ pupils, painted my lips murky colors. Reacted leisurely to the uncertainty in my friends’ eyes, as if I were sprawled out along wooden tables under a building named “Brady’s Pub”. My skin rough like running a hand along newly cut plywood.

Days after I still felt, heard, smelled, and saw you in everything I experienced. I look everywhere for you. Whether if it's in the smell of freshly baked gingersnaps, or the frigid pavement of manhattan where only the beams of streetlight touch.

Your cat wandered up to me on the way to the bus stop this morning, just another decimal of you I happen to trip over every now and then. Oh how God would have so much ambition to have one of your belongings touch me again. She lathered in delight under my palms, my hands caressing along every fiber and follicle of fur.