Aluminum Siding

ALUMINUM SIDING my heart is buried behind the aluminum siding, trapped inside that bubbly feeling i’d get when your arms would graze my waist, in the late night bus rides when the light slipping through the shutters swathed your smirk in soft, blazing bandages. you called me darling back then. why won’t you call me darling again? your love was scrawled between ink splotches, inside hugs and eyebrow raises, while i thought it was too timid to beat its way out of your rib cage. why didn’t i see where everything was hidden sooner? my metamorphosis into something more unhinged began the day i left you. and with you, i left everything i love behind. you twirled saturn’s rings around my fingers and scribbled possums on sticky notes that i treated as love letters, hiding them in scratched phone cases and backpack pockets, carrying your heart on my sleeve, mushed in with chewed erasers and tangled earbuds. so now i walk the heartwrenching path of least resistance away from you, but it’s not the path around the aluminum siding we used to take.