a circle

i remember the beautiful days when i found happiness in your embrace.
times of peace and calm in my mind that i call upon now when i'm surrounded by flames.

i remember when we used to sit in parks and watch each other breathe in and out, slow, daring each other to go higher in life, to move one step closer to heaven. and we'd make it. we'd fly up to heaven and look down into where we'd been, the vast desert of oblivion on the horizon.

we've flown away from each other, now. i don't know how it happened, but it did somehow.
i lost my footing and threw the outline of your skin out of my mind, sending who i was back then colliding with whatever has been set before me this time.
i don't know where i'm going anymore and i lost the map you traced on my body, that one time we said forever, in the park,
remember?

i've already forgotten what it means to hold you and cry, letting all my fears out onto you, down and through your comforting sighs, one by one, dripping memories into buckets of quicksand pulling me down farther and farther into you.

i tried to hold onto the pieces i grabbed as we quickly buried what was dead between us.
but even those, now, have turned crunchy and burned red and brown and dark.
flaking off like the dead bark of a once beautiful tree.
the tree of life maybe, now dead.

i fear i'm losing you each day i stare into my future.
each day i move closer to something without you.