stay here

A dreary wind knocks against me

the sound interrupts the flow of time

and my skin doesn't like the bruise it leaves

I try to walk around it

but my feet grow into stones

and I turn back into a little boy

the bravery those sunsets gave me go away

before the grass gives me a chance to run through its hair

the trees speak an unknown language

and I can hear the branches whistle

everything is so new and nothing is known

I stay still because moving means I am ready

but my heart has a broken gate and it isn't safe to travel today

especially today,

the girl next door saw me watching her dance

and I could not hear the music she breathed with

so I turned my back and ran into the field I had forgotten

there, I remembered what she looked like

her legs walked through my throat

where I could taste her shadows on the tip of my tongue

but I held my breath,

knowing that when I exhaled she would be gone

I opened my hands and wrote her name in the dirt

so the earth would always remember her too