I don’t rememberif we kept any plants.
If we fussed over themlike new parents
worried that the waterwasn’t enough or the sun.
I remember a single windowwas all we needed of light
and when we moved againa balcony looked out
to a pitch black oceanof grass and the half-radiance
of fireflies. Below us the trees linedthe street like checkpoints
and every fall their leaveswould steal more color off our mouths,
our young hair. And our hands, theywere young too.
We dreamed of a gardenand a two-storey house.
We dreamed of childrenor maybe we were told to.
We talked of returning to the oldcity of mild winters.
Long windows and stray catswas the way we memorized it.
I imagined going back therethis evening,
to that same flight of stairswhere we first met
to meet again,or never meet.
***
Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay