breaking up is a long process that starts at 7pm and never ends

Aaron Gogna

I wore you on my sleeve, but

Mother warned I’d outgrow clothes

Long after they’d outgrown me.

And here we are—

Dimly lit skies; dark horizons in the dead of night.

This road on which we stand and spar

Has grown us both, and now will starve

My dreams and every sleep will host its feast upon my feeble mind.

I memorized each crease

On concrete slabs that laid and now will play as

Steps that walk on me.

            And here we are—

I see the stars, and yet you focus on the black that lies between.

You once said my flaws were petty fragments;

Now those flaws are canyon-wide gaps between

Who I am, and who, by now, you thought I would have been.

Leave and I will stand here on the street

To watch you march along this sphere

Until you walk back into me.

And here I’ll stay.