Behind Your Eyes

There were flower petals, falling,

drifting, behind your eyes.

I saw them there, in the times I

glanced up. In those moments

that I allowed myself to be

mesmerized by you.

The slant of the sunlight was like lightning. Playing across your forearms, lines like rope, binding you in place. You sat so still for a moment I thought I wasn't breathing, that I had been absorbed into a photograph, and none of it was real.

But you were real. You were so real.

You raised a hand to your eyes, ruffled your bangs. Looked at me from underneath that slice of hair. We sat like that for a moment, eyes breathing each other in. I needed to blink, but somehow, I couldn't.

"You can go now," is what I said. A whimper into the sunlight, a confession into the morning air, still crisp, still cold, still charged.

The shift of your jaw, the clench of your teeth. Your eyes fall away from mine, but those slits of sunlight still dance on your wrists. Only the sun was allowed to touch you.

"It wasn't a mistake," is what you say. Your distance says otherwise, as does the twitch of your cheek. Lie, lie, lie.

Mistake.

I close my eyes when you stand because I don't want to watch you pick up your things. It's like the reverse of when you came. Putting your jacket back on--slung over the couch. Picking your bag back up--abandoned by the door. Taking the lily you gave me back into your hand--placed on the counter, where I could see it.

But my eyes aren't shut and the lily remains on the counter. Those lilies--they're falling behind your eyes as you look at me. They're dripping onto your cheeks now.

The sunlight entwines itself around your ankles, trapping you in place. I pray that time stops, the sun stops, like a frozen photograph. Because maybe then you won't ever leave after all.