Here is the truth. Exactly how I remember it. And perhaps in being so, it is inevitably undone.

Here when the hour is late and the bottle long gone. Where thoughts like constellations blur in and out of focus, nothing more than buoyant memories; aqueous melancholy. The shoreline recedes into darkness, betraying grains of the past. They catch light of the moon, giving song and sparkle to this late night tale. Here’s the truth, I swear. Word for word, picking through a pile of sedimentary emotion.

The crackle of fire, the cold in my bones and the pitter patter of rain takes me back. Echoes of footfalls crushing fallen leaves, all that’s left of the yellow wood. Racing back in time. Back to where it all started; the beginning of the end.

We’d set up camp between risk and consequence, reckless in a way that only youth can know. Our hearts a cursor, pulsing, eager to forge the story of our lives. There was no such thing as a photo without flash, a song without bass, or too much faith in the future. Little did we know.

What happened over what is felt is of little consequence. The sheer impact of remaining impervious to desire. You to me; a hem caught by a hook in time. Inexplicably attached, like the deadweight subscription of newspapers in a digital world of click stories and shot glass love affairs.

The orchestra of our past carries on listlessly. Erratic, yet somehow segued. Like time.

And all of our choices, embalmed, incubate the senses. The smell of your skin, the sound of your breath, the question mark curve in your ear. Now these seem hollow, like the nape of your neck. Where once I touched and felt you.

Alas, remember the end?

Outside the Admiral, I inhaled. I exhaled, reflecting. I didn’t notice you arrive. But you stood there alongside me as the rain fell down. “I don’t think this was a good idea,” I said, Lying.

You shuffled your weight on both feet and I knew you wanted to say something. I didn’t let you, and you disappeared like mist, suspended in sight, betrayed by my grasp. How I wish I’d run after you and said:

“Hold me like you would a photograph. From the edges, and lightly.” Because anything more and I’d be stained; sullied by the desire of what would always and inevitably leave me undone.