Preemptive I miss you's

[wishiwereemo]

Time was a box of matches, only we were very small
and our heads were filled with phosphorous. When we touched,
the room would blaze and we could only put it out with our eyelids
and our laughter. I still don't know which one of us
was made of sandpaper.

We went swimming without looking in the water first;
all we could think about was escaping the summer heat, hiding
our toes under the surface, away from the sun and from everyone
we'd ever bumped into in the dark blankets of winter.

If I could, tonight I would peel your fingerprints from me like leeches.

I cannot be sure that we were more than two pink mouths like clouds
in a dawn we were too spent to see. I cannot be sure that we were more
than a fermentation of disappointment left clinging to the glass
when we poured out the jars of our former loves.

But the first time I ever used the heat in my new car was with you.
And as the days grow slowly quieter and quieter, I can smell you
in the vents, hear the questioning lilt of your eyes as they slid
along the collar bone straps falling from my shoulders.

When you come back, I will be here still, wrapped in the discomfort
of not knowing, of finding the slender stick of pine laid alongside
dead moth and lost eyelash for months of the most beautiful autumn.