Another day passes outside the window of a plane
I cross dusk with 170 strangers who hold each other’s hands or thighs when the clouds quiver.

And I can’t stop thinking about your fingers running through my hair

or the way your eyes knocked into me that July.

You made me feel like feeling itself was cracking from my chest

and hurtling across the universe,

becoming every iron, nitrogen, oxygen, n’ sulfur soul that lost the sunset to the sunrise

in thoughts of “I want you”

Because your lips burn cosmic explosions into my skin:

a creation story.

Now, heads drape over the mountains

like the twinkle lights you hung out on the patio for Christmas–

You tried to play Claire de Lune on your harmonica

and remember that you loved me.

But you left 8 months later

on a Tuesday.

7:53 p.m.

The pool lights stained your words teal

and smeared my eyeliner into a glimmering sort of heavy.

You said “late summer’s nostalgic,”

noticed the fireflies had all gone,

and I could hear crickets whimper to the sun,

“don’t go.”

And I never wanted another falling moon or set of sandpaper hands to hang onto.

You said I felt frail

like a dandelion you were keeping

from the wind.

And then you just let go.

That night, I woke up laughing,

as 1,000 tiny suns sprouted from my lips,

already dreaming of drifting.

Crossing through purple skies

like telephone wires

rushing to the seaside.

Paris stole my lipstick.

smeared it across cheeks

and hostel sheets and wine glasses, Merlot,

turned my teeth violet and my heart

a violent sort

of love you,

maddened by the beauty of it all.

Like I could chase train tracks

into the self I wanted

into Budapest, or Berlin.

A decrepit sort of art,

like you could tear

my heart into dusty fallen parts

and I’d just become more,

and faces and feet would flood through me, paint

bucket lists on my thighs and think of freedom.
I was never meant to be kept from the wind.