She shuts her eyes to sleep at night and when I die, I want to be remembered the same exact way. Insecurity often stands there, wiping the mascara bleeding from her eyelids that stream into her neckline like a black and white movie would. Accept there are no actors in this scene, there are no roles but a dotted line, marking my words with precision to the very small differences between the black shine in her tear drops and the nervousness extracting from her pale lips as she sits down (head up) and tastes their savory fire. Furthermore, Smiling every three seconds my thumbs caress her cheekbones and skin falls in love with them again. We would sit on the couch for hours laughing at these things, keeping our joy in containment from the outside world, sleeping to the awakening dreams we were inventing that day. And silly questions like if you invented smile or know what it’s like to cry. Those memories have become me now and things have been strange lately... Last night I took three freeways back home-- thinking, as I always do. And it didn't want to stop. The urgency to rearrange the sofa from its original setting when I got home (I wrote her there) and gather the most collective particles of aroma perfuming the air from the letters she would somehow blend into this faded-ink sheet of paper that rests on my hands. This is imagery in its most simplistic form so why is it hard for me to remember? That things don’t always work out the way you want them to. But always for a reason, listening in on me while I converse with life, on the other end of line, scrapping the rust off these clippings that held us together for months. And I envy our inability to sleep soundly like most do. Thus, entertain the idea that someday you’ll turn away from all of it or even stay— watching over me when the vacancies left in my heart grow all too many. And I try to stop the bleeding with the window curtains compressed against my back. Because at that very moment, all that matters in me are the visions of you, the consistent growing glow in your eyes and everything that is reflecting the flickers off my broken little wrists healing from the last time your hands met them (as it did my face and bled like these surfaces of lights do). Dawn, become us--"mourning survived". Because I should have stayed there, right by her side, treasuring the room left in her fingertips the way I wanted them to. But the most important thing to me now is what time I should be leaving... ...because the sun is coming up and I want her to be sleeping (and dreaming) of me when I do. - a