It took me three months to muster up the courage to talk to her,
six, to ask her out,
nine, to make her mine.
She put the same amount of sugar in her coffee every time,
and she taught me how to dance
when I snuck out to meet her in the moonlight.
And she broke my heart
when she said we couldn’t
be.
It was because of her father.
His name is Earl.
And I’m sure he’s seen me walk to the drug store with this girl
by my side.
The one who cut me
deeper than a thousand razor blades she
opened me up and went to operate
surgically implanted a virus that festers and eats away
leaving me emotionally desperate and dilapidated,
degenerate.
And thus the cyclical motion
ends unlike the ocean
which refuses to stop reaching out the to shore.
And now she has a new guy,
and I have a new girl.
I can’t bear to even look at a photograph of you,
to see those eyes that used to
actually look back into mine,
not just catch a glimpse,
then glance down to check the time.
but,
it didn’t have to be this way.
I thought the darkness in your skin was
perfect.
And the way it reflected onto my
pale arms when we held each other was
perfect.
but,
the world could never accept us.
your father could never allow us.
we could never be
us.
because we drank from different fountains
and sat on different ends of the bus.