Dreams for me were summer nights,
chasing you around the fire
as the sky drew dark,
giving it palpable fingers that
clung desperately to our skinned knees.
Laughter had its own color then,
that glowed lazily mid air with fireflies
and the boring upper class chatter
of crickets’ legs.

You were the stain left on my skin
long after we had said our last goodbye.
An ugly, discolored thing to remind me
of every naive thought wasted on you, which,
even scrubbing at it with steel wool
could not take back words already spoken.

Tuesday nights left me huddled in corners,
holding tightly to my mute violin
as tear drops fell upon silent strings.
The only sound I could ever pull forth
from her patient lungs was a shriek that
could make bodies shiver and piano wire snap,
a song not of larks but of crippled hands.
I tried playing a song backwards once,
to see if it might make something beautiful,
but the subliminal messages told me otherwise.

I, myself, had become a stain
of which I could no longer remove,
set peacefully among coffee and cheap attempts
at eradication with fingernail polish remover.
In the carpet I could see every old memory
set against the dancing stars and salamander tails,
and I couldn’t cry, because
I had wasted my tears on Tuesday.

But sitting on the rooftop, watching
fireflies flicker and crickets play
the worlds smallest violin-
wondering why I can’t be that beautiful-
I can still see the remnants of your footprints
In the clouds, and your voice on the breath of
the wind, still calling-
Starfish girl, crawl away from your rock!

But as clingy as I am,
I can’t follow.
I hope one day you’ll learn to move.