if days are paper, if years are books,

made to document one’s life

then someone has burnt mine.

days, months, years gone, alight.

all i have left are lines, fragments of sheets,

all i have left are words telling me what things were.

an emotion here, a thought there, 

a blurry, scarred word whose identity i can only guess.

if a year was in front of me i would find you in its pages.

your name would be scrawled on more than one,

but what would be written?

would you be a pretty face, my friend,

would you be something more?

but i know, i knew, it could never be more

because you could never love someone like me,

and even more not someone like me.

when i read through, when i look at the words,

curling from fire like a snake’s skin abandoned,

i wonder what could have been.

if i held still when your eyes met mine

or chose to hold your hand a little tighter,

or asked sooner what we were supposed to be

would things be different,

would i have more than ash and faint words,

and you might say you could, you would, try to love me.

Edited by Summer Folger