First Love: Ephemera
There’s a box lying somewhere.
Somewhere in a dusty cupboard.
Somewhere behind old paper, older words, and wounds older still.
Somewhere no one can find it.
I think about it, sometimes.
Sometimes, when I breathe.
Sometimes, when I exhale puffs of grey smoke and let those rashes bleed.
Sometimes, when in the dead of night, my lashes are wet.
Sometimes, when I’m looking somewhere, lost and stumble upon a sunset.
Apples and peaches,
Magentas and vermilions,
Pearls and emeralds,
all strewn across a cobalt, teal sky.
The sky you loved.
I drown in it when no one’s looking.
No one would understand, anyway.
I miss them reflected in that shard of glass we held together.
The one that broke, in giggles and hysterics, that very summer.
The one that I, upon a whim, hid in a wooden chest.
The one that I, with trembling hands, unlatched years later.
Long after you had left.
And it’s much too late...
to go back.
Much too late.
Copyright ©
Hiba Junaid
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