Your warmth is overwhelming, 
a wool blanket on June solstice,
yet the time has come to cast 
you off, my hazy memory of 
a dream that never was nor 
could be. 

You’re a scenario I should’ve
forgotten four, five, six years 
prior but let permeate wishes
and daydreams because my 
soul rests in a human body,
in imperfection. 

But for the path that unfurls, 
for my future in all senses of 
the word, I disentangle you 
from the worlds in the novels 
and my head, the ideas I had 
of you, the thoughts. 

Right now, I see 
            your eyes when the sun’s 
light renders an environment
a dimension of glittering jewels;
            your hair in dozens of strangers, 
the inky curls and platinum dye, 
the soft brown and braid of flames, 
the dark onyx and white wisps;
            your embrace scattered amid foliage, 
vines curling around buildings, 
stems intertwining to create crowns, 
to populate sprawling city meadows, 
colorful wildflowers circling graves; 
            and your words inside any motif,
blue skies replacing rotting ceilings,
fish sluggishly, surely pushing forward, 
a lone dragon stretching its wings, scales 
glinting not like a cursed, enigmatic fiend’s, 
but like obsidian and night, like nature. 

Yet one fateful day, I know that 
your face, recalled, will be a blur, 
your name the title of a melody 
half-buried, your quirks swept 
under a flood of new experiences, 
your mark’s depth undone. 

Though you eroded my senses 
like water, so too can the liquid 
cleanse my being of your grip, 
so too can it strongarm sediment 
to fill the spaces you left, so too 
can it start the tale anew.