June

It is June again. It is a June after our June when my mind is not preoccupied by bigger concerns: friends, college, which show should I binge? It is a June since our June when my heart is not in a desperate attempt to heal your wounds with someone else’s kisses. It is a June when I’m learning to acknowledge you, To tell myself that you were a part of my life I cannot erase. No matter how many photos I delete, Or how many poems I try to forget, Or how many times I respond to your efforts to come in again with silence, I cannot let you break into my home not again. not again. never again. No matter how much I resist, I cannot remove part of me And hope to live as a fraction. It is a June three years later And my room still reeks of memories of us. I don’t need photos; Your deep brown eyes and ochre skin is fresh under my eyelids I don’t need voice notes; Your laughter and flirtation from our hours-lasting conversations still echo in my ears. This is not a poem of love. It is only non-rhyming sentences placed against each other To accept that I am not who I am Without our June. There will be many Junes after and many before permanently engraved into my calendars. But no June can ever be like ours And every succeeding one will remind me of the June of 2019.