departures

There is an intimacy that coalesces when you know that you’re leaving a city,

like you’re memorizing the things you cherished in a failed relationship.

I am sorry, I say to the broken fences, the potholes, the skeletal trees.

I walk along the lake and think of the poems I’ve written.

I wrote to the lake and told her I loved her, catalogued her charms,

whispered how beautiful she is when she is frozen and ignored.

She twists her fingers in my hair, bites my lips;

her breath hisses, and I stutter, but she is already a memory.

Snow falls like a suggestion, a reminder.

It gathers on my fingertips but I can’t see it in my hand,

only flickering under the streetlights.

I like the silhouettes, like tracing a jawline in a dark room.

I regret less, maybe, when I only see the outlines; maybe I only see myself.

My photographs become farewells and my descriptions become eulogies.

The seasons fall into categories, I file them away in my head:

photographs and memories, I wait for the day I turn the key.