I dyed my hair red to match my heart,
to match your heart, to match your hair.
You are the childhood best friend. I am still
the one left waiting. You vanished for a year,
slipped from my presence one gilded summer. 
I vanished for a year too, emptied out eyes,
watching the dye run down the sink everyday,
red swirling into a black hole, draining me.
You went on living your life. Mine corroded
by my own hands. Does the gravity of loss
even touch you. You loved me. You love me.
This is a given. We will never mean nothing
to each other, the past always stains the present,
and it lives on in the haunt of what once was.
But you will never fully see me how I am now,
burning the tread of my shoes off walking circles.
My tongue, too, never lets anything die without
memorializing, without a thousand iterations
of sorry, and I wish it was different. You bleed
into every page, invite yourself to my dedications.
You stopped writing poetry, I let it consume me.
that was the first thing I thought of in the hospital:
my poems and the things I would leave to you,
how they would find you to pass on my relics,
how I’d let you edit every line, eclipse me wholly.
You are the only person I’d trust with my words.
You once shared them, finished my sentences.
Now I do and become everything alone. Now I give
myself to memories yet sometimes I do not think
of you when pacing the halls, driving home, dark.
But often I do. I press silver-white eyeshadow
to the inner corner of my eyes how you used to.
I cover my roots. With the fake freckles I might’ve
looked like your sister. I was your sister once.
You’re coming back, but not as everything you were,
still you are something lastingly beautiful, even if 
we have disconnected from our orbit. I am begging,
let me be yours again, finish this poem for me.