seconds

you will first come to understand her. you will begin to look across the room for her. you will hold her head like night nestles the stars, tired from being the only light that cracks through. you will tell her that she is the only her. you will love her. you will buy her things. you will cover a blanket over her in summer when you are close to figuring this whole thing out, knowing it must not be on a beach and that it isn’t cheap and it is slippery with sunlight. you will watch her hair in the shower, observe how it stays there like muddy frost. you will come to know her cries. you will do nothing for her. you will read a book for her. you will promise to do more. you will tell listen to her saying she is not good enough. you will say words that are just as bad. you will hold her again but differently, mute, awfully. you will watch silence in her spanning to all the moments together and those that never were. you will miss her. you will have her. and you will not be the last will, for you will lose her here, writing, waiting, wasting, when you should’ve been there before the first.