a whiff of caffeine and cologne on your left collar, two cups of decaf 

and half a hug along the plane of our shoulders

       and we took off

 

with stolen glances at my pendant as red and radiant as the waking sun  

and the mole on the bottom right corner of my cheek, scaled to the size of a period that never surfaced in our conversations 

        our wings welcomed the wind like a

        prodigal brother come home

 

we chewed on each other’s lips, as the wheels round our noses, screeched as they skid 

across the hard concrete 

as if they couldn’t quite keep the sacredness of the moment they were having

with gravel, 

oblivious that the screeching was a sound unbecoming  

         if they cried, it might’ve looked better.

 

and i was swallowed in my bubble of white chocolate fantasies and ice-cold air blasts

i was flying 

through a tunnel of clouds, pulled by something like gravity, only

horizontal

and it made me giddy, a little lightheaded,

like a brain-freeze but in the heart 

          the fear of being suspended in the skies        

          with nothing        but energy

          and fuel

butterflies gliding through fire rings and tight ropes with caterpillars and centipedes 

and the whole goddamn jungle

and I felt, for a second, like I was falling

and laughed, for I was so good at pretending as if I wasn’t already six feet under.

 

and it wasn’t until a series of free-falling and awakening and breathing in reverse

as if they’d pushed a bottle of codeine down my blood (that i didn’t even know how, for

i could’ve sworn i had on a sweater with sleeves up to the rim of my wrist)

that the snowstorm hit the windshield

        and i could see everything change within

        seconds

 

snowflakes, slightly larger than the mole on my cheek, falling face-flat on the glass

labeled unbreakable

        and i remembered how you used to call 

        me that 

snowflakes melting into raindrops

winter turning into monsoon and back

before my lips could even finish spelling your name out loud when i saw a billboard of your favorite pack of pretzels 

christmas felt like the season for metamorphosis 

where the only thing evading change was me 

 

and as i glanced at the crazed, traffic-driven crowds of New York City,

walking on pavements that turned white snow into brown 

and footprints of man that once walked the city of dreams into sole-prints of cheap, stolen leather 

i wondered how on earth i’d been inspired to craft poems, staring at the loss of beauty in the world 

and it suddenly made sense, why i was writing about soot in snow, 

           breakable glass

                              and us.