our atoms

i light you in ways of fire in these moments where i build beyond what actually was beyond the edges of what we touched and what we left unnamed we paint each other in theory to define we instead of who we are i paint you into being in strokes i can control because becoming is frightening and the unknown breathes too loud at night i decide, in time, how i think of you not out of ego but out of safety out of the need to hold something still we stand before each other at the edge of this life like something almost said protecting ourselves in the silence between words enjoying the closeness we don’t admit diving without knowing how deep it goes deciding if we love what we don’t know or just the feeling of almost and these are the things running through my mind half past midnight when everything feels louder than it should i look for you beside windows in reflections i call to in glass that bends your shape because sometimes i don’t see i just speak into the distance into whatever we call this hoping it answers back they say our atoms are replaced every decade and some remain hidden in places we don’t notice in skin, in breath, in memory so i wonder if you remember how our touch feels after all this time if it lingers somewhere beneath you i look for you in reflections in memory and in reality past the windows we drive by at night raindrops on the sidewalk puddles holding broken versions of light the city repeating itself in pieces if we are replaced do you remember how it felt or do we only remember the idea of it every time i say your name does it reach anything real do those particles do you think they remember or do they just carry the shape of it i sit in this longer than you realize longer than temptation can build longer than silence should stretch we lie to ourselves wondering how to wander without losing what we almost had how to guide ourselves through this life of ours without naming what we were and i remember the shirt you wore on that dark night how it moved when you turned your touch the pressure of it the way it stayed after the wind moving through us like it knew the warmth settling into my chest the beginning of summer when everything feels possible the way our fingers interlocked like they had done it before we came running too fast to stop too soft to hold like something already slipping lips like red pressed into moments we couldn’t keep eyes as deep as blue holding more than you said sheets to the wind nothing grounded atoms in the sand scattered but still near lost but not confused moving inside the time it’s been like it never fully left half past midnight again and again left to right back and forth it was our time even if we never said it i think we both made it out alright maybe just not the same