thirty-three.

You close your eyes
tasting the hot sticky
sweet smell of mulberries
gone rotten in the rain.

Open them, lose
the flash of red black
red black sunlight through
eyelids, replace it with

the green of trees pale
and leaves curled into
a threat of storms. The sun
so bright that you can't

look away, the heat
slipping across skin like
breezes over a lake you
once called home. Every

memory makes a lie
of history. Every lost
moment was given
willingly, let loose once

with a blessing. It's too late
to call this regret, too soon
to consider it nostalgia. This
is only the space before the

key change, the breath
you've been holding for
a year, five, a lifetime. The
places you will soon miss.