The Names We Keep

 

it seems impossible that we ever touched. given how vast the distance between us. 

i must have been a star long since extinguished by the time my light reached your eyes. 

i never had a name until you gave me one. 

we wore the space in tender folds. as if the world was ours alone to corrupt. greedy orphans who snuck our way into someone else's feast. 

everything was quiet. ache deafened by shock. 

runners caught on the sharp corners of our grief. 

the world collapsed. an exquisite apocalypse. 

time measured us by what we'd lost. 

an eternity evaporated in seconds. and we were strangers again. 

hollow dolls in their naked epiphanies. auctioning off their soiled dresses.