Top level. Nothing but concrete and open-air, the world feels fragmented, from here. Blinding white lights cast a pallid shade of hunger over my skin and the ground as the air breathes across the back of my neck and sends a shudder through to my bones. Looking out into the night, chilled with a surface-level fear of isolation, I find my thoughts slipping into a dazed zone of subconscious whisperings. I wonder if you ever retreat to somewhere you can stand and feel the night air kiss your fingertips, where you feel the moonlight tearing your eyes away from the lights of the city. Do your thoughts ever burn with the pattern of my freckles, the bend of my neck, the warmth of my eyes? Standing alone, vulnerable to the soft sweet calling of the stars, does your mind conjure my image or listen, hours away, for the beat of my heart? When I’m alone up here, my eyes see only summertime; whistles and splashes and backflips that aren’t allowed, strawberry lemonade and flip flops and the oily aroma of the sunscreen that cakes your skin. When I’m alone, I think only of you; driving without music and the taste of smoothies and the icy chill of the water that day your eyes were only on me. I remember the crinkling lines of your smile, the caring “how are you’s?” and the intrinsic comfort of you, beside me. Hearing your smile on the phone, seeing you walk across the pool deck towards me, searing your image and your stories and every single word you said into my memory, for as long as they’ll last. When I’m alone, all I taste are these memories, all I know is you. And now, four-stories above the ground and above the reality that you’re not with me and that it’s been months since you’ve said my name, I crave summertime more than ever.
Categories: Prose