don't leave, because I'll come back and haunt you. you told me that night, your voice like dark moths smothering me.

that day my bare feet made quietened whispers down your coarse wood stairs and I flew like birds and freedom, out and away.

--

it is being scared of looking behind me and finding your veined hand on my shoulder and your smile shadowing me. it is tears sliding back into my eyes from the stains on my pillow. it is promising myself that I will become a nun. it is returning a smile from a stranger. it is writing x = 23 on your doorstep when the 15th rolls by again and my immortally young [foolish] mind believes x still marks the spot. it is illogical and irrational yet my mind can draw out all the reasons in a mind map between the second and the second-last ceiling board above me.

I walk the streets bundled in a jacket in summer. I always bring an umbrella just in case it rains and I need to borrow a corner of some guy's coat like I did yours. I watch the reflections of early-morning on my windscreen and draw little stick figures kissing with my finger on the condensation on my window. Then I wipe them out because no one deserves to be that happy.

--

you were right, you know.

but I don't regret floating out of your window, wisping through the spaces between your fingers and making waxy wings from the slipped-out words and unspoken frustration.

--

I brought another guy home yesterday. he has a nicer voice and coarser hands and a way of holding my head up when he claims me with drunken words whispered into my summer-dried hair. he twirls the longest strands around his fingers and I don't want to tell him that he is hurting me.

"can I call you Roxanne?"

I sigh. so he is lonely [too].

"only if I can call you Jim."

[he snuck out of my bed at 3.52 AM this morning. too bad I couldn't run away from my own house and all its ghostly inhabitants.]

--

it has been three years since I left you and I'm still searching the lit streets with my time-wearied eyes when I hear the name "James".