Author: kelly

days stretch into months and months stretch into years like
dough: beaten, flattened, pulled apart to mock the crumbling fool I am.
nothing has changed.
radio silence brims like sea foam in the concave of our ears
and we aren’t speaking
but in this moment, my love, everything is perfect.

I know to savour it—slowly, blissfully, precariously
—like justifying an expensive dessert by letting it melt ever so slowly on your tongue
before swallowing it whole in all its saccharine futility.

I look to the ground where our shadows merge. this is as real as it can ever get.
all you’ll ever be is another inane fantasy, my love,
a thirteenth fraction of a clock.
diabolical as honesty. forbidden as eden.

still, I marvel at the revolutionary alignment of our stars
because I know that in this moment, my love, everything is perfect.

we still aren’t speaking,
but being so close to you that the world around peels itself away
is already more than I have begged for.

somewhere in the defunct cogs of time, an inexplicable force
churns me on.

as perfect as this moment is, my love, I already know what is about to come next.
the ground I stand on will tremble like the surface of a lake before a storm.
the words I’m about to speak will topple in slow motion like porcelain off a shelf.
the way you look at me will tense up like the hind limbs of a starved predator
and I will be left a reeled fish thrown off the boat, bloodied,

wondering

if I’ll ever get back in a moment like this, my love, in which
everything is perfect.