Our Usual Way

A Year of Sonnets — 037/365

Photo by Byron Stumman on Unsplash

I guess we fell apart in the usual way
and the story’s got dust on every page —
but sometimes I wonder how you think about it now
And I see your face in every crowd.
— Taylor Swift, Holy Ground

I see you on the sidewalk in Uptown
— just shut my eyes and we are young again
and walking into Mem’ries, getting down
our swing step. We are laughing. We begin
inhaling music. You, with patience, teach
these broken feet to move in lively time —
and I, so rarely joyful, dare to reach
past melancholic doubt to the sublime
one night — tonight and only — ’til the spell
disintegrates to ash, a poisoned well.

There is no reconstruction, only scars
a psychic wound, a friendship now consigned
to misery and memory. The stars
recall us though, sometimes; perfect, aligned.