Imagining a Day With You

Imagining a day with you

is sweeter than being with you—

or being sick with my loneliness

on dark nights,

on even the happiest nights.

Maybe it’s the way your black shirt

makes you look like

a better, brighter Lana Del Rey.

Maybe it’s the way I love you

like someone who knows

you’ll never be mine.

Maybe it’s because you love him.

Maybe that truth

sits beside me at night,

like a quiet wound

I keep touching.

I walk past the graveyard

where fluorescent red roses bloom—

no sun there,

but they glow anyway,

like the memory of you

in places you’ve never been.

Sometimes, I talk to you

in my mind,

and you listen like you used to—

soft,

half-smiling,

already fading.