Poetry by Ryan Meadows

Edited by Summer Folger

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.

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