sunday ramblings over coffee

 smoke and cinders
I could edit a line a thousand times and it’d still portray some part of you and it’s
not like I ever see you except your face
lingers at street corners and  I often pass by that market we used to go to
when the sun would cast our shadows on the grey cement
and you’d buy Arizona tea and pop its lid open as beads of sweat dripped down the back of your golden neck

and I know you were never the one, or not the real one, anyway
but that doesn’t stop me from changing the radio when that song we played at least two million times that one July
comes on and the memory floods in as we sit on rooftops and watch the trains go by in a city
both of us disinterested

it’s funny how little I knew back then and even now how much I know
that I know very little

I am wary of the snake charmer and of anything that seems like a pompous parade, shining brightly at night as people clap their hands and celebrate nothing
all of us watching the fireworks reach their peak and die
their twinkles turn to falling smoke and cinders before you have time to form
a memory of what they once were and yet anytime I see the lights bursting in the air it feels as though it’s the very first time and I am okay with that

we don’t need to
follow the classic routine and say this because you feel you need to or because I maybe need to hear it because in the end it’s only words and in fifty years I doubt either of us will remember exactly how we felt
at the moment when we turned into smoke and cinders