Sestina
I fell in love looking out of a window.
Lost in your eyes, emeralds at the bottom of the ocean.
Your voice, a hymn I couldn’t forget, the verse
I waited all my life to hear. Our lips were fire,
begging for one another like gasoline, but time
was not on your side. I watched our love jump off a bridge.
I fell in love on the George Washington Bridge.
I studied the outline of your lips as you slept against the car window.
Your hand rested on my thigh, and my god, I swear that time
expanded. I pictured our future, a wedding by the ocean,
our bodies melted together like wax in a fire.
Losing you was like erasing a verse.
I fell in love singing a verse.
The one we screamed all the words to, right before the bridge.
Your lungs filled with water. I drowned mine with fire,
dutch courage pushing me to look out the window.
All I see is your eyes, mesmerized by the ocean.
You told me, “I think it’s almost time.”
I fell in love without knowing the time.
I should’ve known when you stopped singing your verse,
when your days revolved around watching the ocean.
The clock ran out when we reached the Brooklyn Bridge.
A couple asked me to take their photo, and there was your window,
your chance to join the tides below. My heart caught on fire.
I fell in love before there was fire.
I wanted to erase you, demolish all sense of time,
clocks, watches, calendars flung out of the window.
Because without you, everything stood still. Your verse
died with you, cascaded from your chest as you dropped from the bridge.
Ashes to ashes. Emeralds at the bottom of the ocean.
I fell in love away from the ocean.
No amount of whiskey could extinguish this fire.
My lips were put out, unable to bridge
the gap where yours used to be. It must be my time.
Our song is no longer playing. My verse
has faded. I opened the window.
I fell out of love with the ocean outside my window.
I set fire to my verse.
I destroyed the bridge that stole your time.