i carved your initials into the bench by the tree under the moon where we once sat and promised forever to one another in foolish abandon

do you remember

the promises we whispered into one another’s ears while we made love under the stars

did we make love i ask myself

or did we affirm to the universe what our hearts sang in the quiet emptiness of succor

i don’t know

your breath on my bare chest, my hands on yours, heavily breathing a chorus of want and need

is that bench still there, the letters of childish vandalism and immortal words that turned out to be as short lived as the insects that watched us from the grass

has someone else come along and scratched out the awkward heart so painstakingly etched in the wood, replaced my dream with their own

part of me hopes so, that part of me that left with you and came back with a fat lip and black eye, limping back into the shadow of my heart that beat against my ribs in a staccato song for your ears only

those same ears that once perked with my rumbling call across the hazy days of yesteryear

we gave ourselves to forever and ignored the best buy date stamped in bright red beneath the bar code

defaced by love before and soon to be marred by love to follow

and still that boy’s love for that girl sparkles in my mind, like a star beam that takes millennia to reach our eyes, it still has a long way to go before it truly sputters out of existence

these fingers, long numbed by cuts and burns and scrapes could trace your initials a thousand times and still never forget the feel of your flesh, the taste of your sweat, the sounds of your cries

or how when you whispered that lie that at that time was simple truth, how it sent chills down my spine, made my stomach do somersaults

and how as i carved your initials into the wood that had seen so many other loves blossom and fade

how i thought ours was something new and exciting and would change the world

and it did

mine at least for as long as it lasted before the ember died out

maybe the inherent flaw is my initials are me, so when i put that down for eternity it was factual but i was not the me they were intended for

some other me, in some other time, wears that crown of jewels with your heart as the centerpiece, the one too heavy for my furrowed brow to bear, left bare for another briar crown with another painful reminder of loss