Gas Station Manifesto

Turning the pages backward I find pressed flowers in my old diary from the day we saw lavender growing in the woods. The sun was swallowed by clouds that were halfway to a metaphor and you told me the eye color of love was dark hazel, the very depth of my own. In a packet of handwritten letters I find polaroids taken at a cemetery. I remember I told you when I die pour hot honey on my grave to wash away my small-town sins. Your manifesto, written in a gas station bathroom: you mourned never having learned how to properly smell peonies and failing to share blood and wine with people who don’t exist. You kissed me and I told you things the moon told me under streetlights and stars. You replied if it ever ended to burn it all. In my hands I hold a broken promise.