WARMTH OR THE AUGUST BEFORE LAST / SASHA ZIRIN

WARMTH OR

THE AUGUST

WORDS SASHA ZIRIN

BEFORE LAST

It feels like, Every day I swallow the distance whole And let it simmer and slosh inside me. To relieve the presence of none of you There are two, One pouring companionship into my mouth Like how you fed me chips and giggled On a warm night the August before last. The other looks lonely, Is loneliness, is the presence of absence Who can feel so fully that i’m lonely too We feel so full But not of the happiness that tempted us into This oxymoronic pit of together yet apart I love you too much to let go You echo those words, you echo The traces of sadness that run through my face, The ones severing the tie between love and joy, Replacing joy with yearning, responsibility, living only In the next moment that I get to see you again And touch you slowly So we can savor and once again feel how much we waited Instead of the moment around me, Where your absence feels as present as you would And I touch it slowly And feel an emotion strong, And it’s the gravity of how much i’m waiting And it’s the gratification i never feel anymore And I don’t know how to tie love and joy across state lines And i don’t like how my friends look at me when I leave to call you They don’t want to know what it’s like to understand And i wouldn’t want to either if you were here To touch me slowly Instead of the version of you Pouring companionship into my mouth That reaches into my chest while I sleep, Cups my heart in its hands, And enters my dreams

Fizzling Like the hiss the fire pit made as its flame faded away And neither of us felt like rekindling it Instead we laughed On a warm night the August before last. Fizzling Like what I can not help but deny We love each other, that should be enough, There are people happy people who for them this is enough I love our love but i don’t love how its states away And everyones thinking it but nobodys telling me How unhappy I look as life goes so fast Spinning around me But I’m not moving anywhere good I’d rather have us stay Vaguely amused by the novelty of keeping busy But deciding that keeping busy is not for us The emotions are all encapsulating enough Nobody here wants to think about the past But we don’t follow trends Except I know in this dorm hallway there is another girl Laying in bed on the phone with Someone similar Driving herself up the wall because she’s always Staying in bed thinking about Someone similar And nobody thats apart from this particular peculiar part of me Will go further that some sympathy Thrown at my feet but i don’t care i need you and There’s a high i’m waiting for And I microdose it in the phone There’s a high i’m waiting for And I microdose it beneath the bottle And everything here would be better If you were right beside me I cant laugh unless its in chorus with yours Not now Not yet

You can still be by my side even if we are apart Even if we experience a severance like cold heat. I can live in the future in a shiny and new way, And never guaranteed way, A way in which there is just a sliver of chance This invisible road map of life Leads back to us Our eyes will be closed but i can feel you in the dark I would recognize you anywhere And I would hug your knees instead of my own And I would hug them And you would laugh

“A way in which there is just a sliver of chance This invisible road map of life Leads back to us”

And give a smile that glows in a way nobody else’s can Just like what happened On that warm night the August before last The one that slips And slips And I forget something from it every time i recollect it And I recollect it and i recollect it Until my arms tire and it gets strewn all over the floor. And that is when I call you And that is when i know, on the other line, You are glowing in a way nobody else can And that’s when I remember that we are together still And that’s when i remember how happy we felt And that we can be happy again, But in a different way than how we were On that warm night the August before last. Warm Warm like the glow nobody else has Not warm like smoke and what’s beneath the bottle Not warm like you paused on Facetime and I see the blur And your shoddy silhouette Warm like waiting for what will arrive We can’t break up Or else the warmth will be gone and smoke and what’s beneath the bottle and your shoddy silhouette will be all I’ll have left Your warm voice says to wait for what will arrive What will arrive will not be the emotional clash of when i see you again But the soft sun that always appears Once a loss like this finally starts to hurt a little less