the space above my ears.

Parachute, Floor

Tonight, I write another song with my eyes painted closed, eyelashes pasted to my cheeks with the color purple.

With trembling hands, I'm touching the thoughts of yours that I have adopted as my own.

Touching.

Feeling.

Remembering.

Me and you.

Us, in a wet parking lot in the dark evening, when the glow of the headlights paints your skin orange and revives the fire in your eyes.

There's a crackle when the cars drive past, wheels flicking drops of water behind them with reckless abandon.

It smells like the rain that now resides in gutters and dips in the pavement.

The familiar scent of fast food drifts over to us from across the road.

In a moment where no cars can see us, I kill the distance between us and hold you because I've forgotten what it feels like.

It makes you smile and you hug me back until we hear the soft, wet crackle of another truck approaching.

It feels nice.

You smell like you and cigarette smoke.

You and rain.

You and french fries.

It's my favorite smell.

I tell you I've missed you because I have, and you say that you miss me too.

I tease you about your shoes for a moment, peppered purposefully with holes, yet you wear them in the rain.

It's been warm this November, you say, in your defense.

You talk to me about the world you painted, a world that smells just like this and is inhabited by people we can only hope to see again.

I talk to you about Sylvia Plath.

You tell me I should read her to you sometime and I say that I will.

We talk so fast we can hardly breathe, unwilling to waste a second of this long awaited time together.

But we both have too many things to say and eventually, the black taxi cab rolls into the parking lot with a shrill screech.

You turn and give me a very sad smile and I know you have to go.

The comforting smells of evening are contaminated by that of bitter exhaust sputtering out the pipes of the cab.

More than anything, I want to grab you and run.

I want to wrap an arm around your waist and extend my hand to the ebony sky above until a resident of heaven tosses down a rope and pulls us both to safety.

I want to shoot the tinted windows out of the cab, stripping the cruel object of its privacy, show the world what goes on inside this dark cloud and its humid sticky heat.

I would do it; you know this much.

I can't save you, though, because the look in your eyes tells me that if we were to run away to heaven, we'd be followed.

If I were to shoot out the windows of the car, I'd be setting free hundreds of malevolent spirits and Earth's atmosphere would become no safer than the inside of that vehicle.

So I wave a casual goodbye, hoping that my eyes can convey the millions of things I still need to tell you.

You also wave goodbye, but all your eyes say is that you love me.

You get inside and the car engine howls, barreling down the now-empty street with its precious cargo.

I cry for a while, unspoken words leaving my eyes, tucked away in teardrops.

I climb inside my own car, which is shiny and red and smells like champagne.

Resting my head against the cool leather of the steering wheel, I can hear you, months from now, climbing out your bedroom window.

Snowflakes fall, kissing the ground and everything on it.

You creep over the fence and down the driveway, walking in a wide arc around the cab, which is ever-presently parked alongside the curb.

The sky is a soft brown, reflecting the man-made lights from the city and something a little bit darker.

You walk about for hours, listening to the ground crunch beneath your impractical shoes.

Reaching the parking lot where we stood not too long ago, reveling in each other's presence, you picture me there with you.

Touching every freezing street lamp on the way home, you leave behind not a footprint, but a small pile of snow.

You have been trying to fix yourself with flypaper, just barely keeping your head above the dirt piling all around you.

At this time, I will be at my grandmother's house sipping coffee by a frosty window.

Through the veil of cold crystals in their horizontal motions, I'll pretend that the Christmas lights strung around the balcony railing are a skyline.

I'll pretend I'm not really so far from you.

However many light-years away you may be, though, both of us will wake the following morning and find crayons in our sheets and we'll know we were both thinking about each other before we fell asleep.

I was thinking about something you said as my eyes fell shut, wondering exactly what you meant by it.

You told me that no one can describe a world where God makes no mistakes unless their universe is opium-induced.

I thought it was cryptic and a little pessimistic, but it wasn't.

It was you telling me that this life, the lungfuls of black smoke- they were not rebounded episodes of karma; something I'd been telling you for eons.

It was an expression of gratitude.

No longer would you consciously nurse the idea that you were anything less than worthy, no matter how much easier it made survival.

We have worked and we are working on it.

We are getting there.

If you read this, you will not know it's about you, but I hope someday you will.

I hope someday you'll never have to question whether you do or do not deserve love.

You'll know that it isn't as simple as good and evil, but whatever categories we may fall into, yours will be that of pure intentions.

It will be that of a good heart.

Together, we'll strip that cab of parts and build something new, something that will bring us places far beyond the horizon.

And we'll do it because we deserve it.