late this month

worn by soft light, you say your heart is heavy. the sky is coated in cold gray, neutered with smoke. i cannot see out my window. you grip my hands tighter, ask don’t you see, kacper, look at how good this news is. i try. in front is you, the colour of the earth, the roots to silent forests, the reason for flowers. there behind your ear is the expectation of leaving, the way the dark does, the way it returns as an echo, the way we don’t always. there are the eyes found in your mouth, how they peer at teeth slowly giving up to sweetened emptiness. there is the small gulp when your throat swallows thousand years of hard won evolution filled with those ancient disappointments, those vestigial worries, those old familiar wounds that have never healed in animals who lost their tails. there is music, your song. there are words i forget. there are allergies to the bees out there somewhere vomiting to produce honey, and there is saliva dripping down your chin. there are my hands, now on your face, holding it as i was taught to hold, as i have been held, as i wasn’t held too. in you and with you, i remind myself that sometimes i mistake you for home. i remember i moved out eventually. later, i listen to the landlady knocking for rent. she smells of fire and morning.