Poetry 154: Photograph by Andrea Gibson

Photograph

By Andrea Gibson

I wish I was a photograph tucked into the corners of your wallet. I wish I was a photograph you carried like a future in your pocket. I wish I was that face you show to strangers when they ask you where you come from. I wish I was that someone that you come from every time you get there and when you get there I wish i was that someone who got phone calls and postcards saying “Wish you were here.”

I wish you were her. Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling and they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground, and the trees are naked and lonely, I keep trying to tell them new leaves will come around in the spring but you can’t tell trees those things. They’re like me. They just stand there and don’t listen. 

I wish you were here. I’ve been missing you like crazy. I’ve been hazy-eyed staring at the bottom of my glass again thinking of that time when it was so full it was like we were tapping the moon for moonshine or sticking straws in the center of the sun and sipping like icarus would forever kiss the bullets from our guns.

I never meant to fire, you know. I know you never meant to fire, lover. I know we never meant to hurt each other. Now the sky clicks from black to blue and dusk looks like a bruise. I’ve been wrapping one night stands around my body like wedding bands but none of them fit in the morning. They just slip off of my fingers and slip out the door and all that lingers is the scent of you. I once swore if I threw that scent into a wishing well all the wishes in the world would come true. Do you remember. 

Do you remember the night I told you I’ve never seen anything more perfect than snow falling in the glow of a street light, electricity bowing to nature. Mind bowing to heartbeat. This is going to hurt bowing to ‘I love you.’ I still love you like moons love the planets they circle around, like children love recess bells, I still hear the sound of you and thin of playgrounds where outcasts who stutter beneath braces and bruises and acne are finally learning that their rich handsome bullies are never gonna grow to be happy. I think of happy when i think of you.

So wherever you are, I hope you’re happy. I really do. I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight. I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking. I hope your lungs are open and breathing your life. I hope there’s a kite in your hand that’s flying all the way up to Orion and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out. I hope you’re smiling like God is pulling at the corners of your mouth ‘cause I might be naked and lonely, shaking branches for bones but I’m still time zones away from who I was the day before we met. You were my first mile where my heart broke a sweat and I wish you were here. I wish you’d never left, but mostly I wish you well.

I wish you my very, very best.