The memories scattered on the bed are

swollen in contempt and misery—

How plundered they look in the rolling rain.

The sweetness of rumble rots

my teeth; we're peeled off charcoal desires and destruction.

Anguish decays through your bones:

A neon-imprinted rumor that caused it all.

The dream melts in the distant calls.

Lily, I miss you—I know what I did was worse

than anything in my life; but what

was worse than this is me. 

Perhaps, another stolen kiss or trashed lie

could heal the depth of mauve scars and wine-red eyes.

Do you remember our little corner, love?

A mess of tangled arms and beaming secrets stirred in frozen lasagna.

The room's no longer visited.

Wrinkled sheets and moth-eaten books.

A dollar bill between the pages—our Christmas shopping.

Books with light brown words and spaces of flowers and infinity.

A torn last page with our Polaroid picture on it. 

The day lavenders started despising lilies.

We left it when we were sixteen. Too young, I know.

But Lily, you know this isn't true—none of these.

The sheen of your tears twists my heart;

I miss those star secrets we used to share —

Lover's names and champagne problems.

A thin, misty Sunday melody still plays—out of tune

through thick-coated runaway and self-decided isolation.

The foliage tears through your numb eyes.

I wonder if you'd show up again

and kiss me slow—forgetting this stupid mess.

My room feels cold without you,

Empty like the spaces between those grey-brown words.

What if I showed up at your door

one steel Saturday morning and said you

"Lily, everything was wrong back then—I want you."

Will you let me have your heart?

Will you forgive my 16-year-old self?

I wish I could replay my life like your favorite song

Under the rotten away grasses and your pink cardigan.

Dumb consonants mess up your mind in vodka and cigars.

Violets bleed in the nipping frost of December.

I know it was wrong, and our hells were aflame, 

but, Lily, it was another summer mistake, listen.

The wine-tinged bruises never fail to scream the nerves out of me

when I look at my blank screen for your last voicemail.

You cried for help, Lily;

I didn't show up until midnight.

The waves still haunt me when the fire growls.

Our conversations were tender frostbites,

And everything else was sleek green like your dyed hair.

We lay languid, living for the fake hopes

that one day, our souls will explode with a million unspoken words.

We passed and lost green hours of laughter and loss.

My cheeks are warm with tears from our last kiss.

The ruining sun slices through my heart:

Dirty, broken heels and tangerine tears.

It's too acidic to think things without you —

I miss you, Lily, I really do.

Will you love me if I say it was a summer mistake?

I was only sixteen; I didn't know

any of those things.

All I know is I've been waiting in the empty hall

for the longest time, and I haven't heard your heels clicking anytime.

"Remember me, Lily," is something I can't say.

A stab of a knife before everything breaks.

It's too clouded inside suffocating albums and dusty cobwebs.

I'm standing near the window pane,

where you'd dance, and I'd sing.

Only in those rare moments when you said,

"Daisy, let's dance near the fireplace," 

the timid days turned into a mirage of moon-dust nights.

All I could dream of was you.

But it seemed we were the last victims of Atlantis.

The only sound was our breaths, robbed of oxygen between our lips and teeth.

Purple marks and summer stains.

A tube of black lipstick smudged on the mirror again.

It turns out that living's a bigger lie than me,

and memory's another grey illusion like us.

What if I showed up another day at your kitchen window?

Will you let me have your heart, Lily?

Will you love me?

I wished it was a nightmare, for I never dreamt of your face.

Bright green hair, jean jacket, smoky eyes, self-guilt;

My Lily—the only true thing I had.

Soon it swept away with the violet rain and burning cigars.

Oh, Lily, death can't tremble our burns.

We're still living in the spaces between the last words

of the decayed souls and razing love stories

of dead souls that never knew what it was to be in seventeen.

I want to patch our broken limbs, 

and fix our broken hearts before

we read the muffled letters again and again,

and fade away with the floating ashes of your unsent postcards.

The streetlights remind me of your pink skin under the sheets;

A little purple heart: "I'll be there for you forever."

All that I can dream of is you, Lily.

Would you write about us again

if you were right next to me?

I know it's over, yet it's not totally—  

'Cause I miss you more than anything and everything.

Trees burned in the winter glow while we fell.

Standing inside the dusty room,

Wearing your favorite cardigan,

I'm more than miserable today; I don't have my home.

Everything drowned to keep us afloat.

And like a whistle of summer breeze, we were gone

in the matchstick smoke of midnight melodies.

The gurgling blues of summer and withering greens of winter sunder me.

We never had much time, had we?

All I have now is the emptiness you poured before we left in summer:

I'm still running for you, Lily, even when the butterflies burn into ashes.

–missing you is louder in my overlapping silence.

——————————————   

A/N: A quick tap on the star to lift everyone's mood? Thanks!

© April 16. 2023. Sreeja Naskar.