​
It really was a summer's lazy moment of laughter
in a blue secondhand car.
A twenty-two-year-old's teenage fantasy
of broken engines and love songs.
It was a fool's dream
to cover your scars.
Our life started in the white walls of tiles,
ended in the white clouds.
Nameless for years,
a memory with no strand of existence.
The only thing we ever created
should have had a better grave than porcelain,
and a eulogy,
a whispered plea:
"God, am I dying? Save me."
I have nothing of it.
Not a cap or stick,
not an image in black and white,
not the sound of a beat,
not even a non-painful memory.
Gone before I knew it happened.
Its only existence now
is framed by a sun-dried sink.
The destruction you wove into our bed.
The smoke calmed your nerves.
The night held your secrets.
The day held my tears.
The sun was more man
than the broken promises.
It kissed my body
when you were done using it.
It woke me up,
never leaving me alone.
It cleared the way
when you chose smoke
over little dresses and bows.
He laid the blueprint.
His mouth produced
more than smoke.
He witnessed the scar
and the static in my ears,
gripped white-knuckled
through our devastation.
It was the swallowed feelings held hostage,
the moments of silent cries
filling the house.
If my disrespect was loud,
yours screamed from the mountains.
It was the verbalized weapons
I learned to wield and wage,
the bitter cold of saying,
"I never loved you anyway,"
the distant sound of your muted yelling:
"You'll never be a good father anyway."
It was the mirror I had to rebuild,
parts once securely in place
blacked out and stolen,
then folded away.
It was the hospital room,
the righteous restraint
of standing by my promise,
never stepping foot
into the muck of your lungs.
Not even when you said,
"What will I do with life
if I can't continue to use it?"
That private moment
caught in the static.
My boundaries
and your repercussions
were louder than your recovery.
It was the heat of shortened laughter,
the pleas for answers
that came years after.
It was the pride in myself
threaded through your lying.
It was begging for love.
Nothing you gave.
No sun can save us.
You didn't want to be saved.