In Your Heart

The air grows warm, the skin with a certain new flush. There was a breeze today, across the bridge, that was nothing but kind and summer seemed forever. He looked me in straight in the eyes, in that way he has and he cannot help it. It makes me stutter. I crossed the bridge to your island and it filled my mind with visions of midnight skinny dipping and daylong breakfasts on the roof, but that's all gone now. I don't understand if I should mourn it or if it's already too long ago to remember properly. Allergies cloud my vision, nostalgia. The vines on the windowsill have claimed every last inch; they trail up the window blind strings and grow into each other inseparably. Big purple flowers are born at dawn. They die every afternoon and leave shriveled reminders of mortality on the dusty floor. I read of adventures in Europe two generations ago, of the liberty of pants, of rebellion in dirt; I adore her struggles and wonder what revolution remains, if it would make me free. The light nights rush past me and I curse my alarm clock, weep at the passing season and life.

My father brings a paper bag of things out of storage. A frying pan, a mixing bowl. He sneaks in a few old mix CDs, with tender words from a boy many years gone, written in the sleeve. I knew I was never going to love him, but I said the words first, if only to not always be a step behind. It ended shortly after. I don't know what my father was trying to say, but it only turned my gut. He left his girlfriend recently, sold the house. She looked just like me but it doesn't mean anything.

All my heroes end with their head in the oven
and I don't know why.