"hello," you say absentmindedly as i set down my sketchbooks, a sack of pens, and my laptop down on the washed out, history painted wooden boards of the picnic table you picked by the crystalline pond.

the tender sunlight is filled with ripe apples and millions of microscopic leaf fractures shattered by the hundreds of shoes that treaded over them. hundreds of solar dreadlocks brush over your face at a narrow angle, creating fairy-shaped shadows over your golden cheeks.

the park is so peaceful and the silence is delicate like a china doll from a museum, but somehow your voice doesn't slice it the way a butter knife does cheese like the way mine does; instead it creates a soft ripple over it, then fades away into the placid quiet. the noiselessness creeps into my throat and chokes away any words, so the only sound i could make in response was a low hum.

everyone is too busy breathing the strands of october to make a sound.

we stare at each other for a moment, a faint, twisted smile on your face. something flickers in your eyes, like a stray signal, before they turn blank once more, lapsing back into a void of emptiness, their depths hidden with tragic beauty. with a sudden longing, i wonder what they could have held before.

"so we're deciding on a collection of 5 poems?" your eyes are pools of alabaster water filled with gold and green ink swirls. your hazy gaze looks at me tentatively, and i wonder why a god like you would ever look at me.

the silence is a faucet that fills my throat with silver pools of quietude, slithering into my chest and into the bronchi of my lungs. i couldn't breathe, speak, or focus.

so i nod.

your expression grows thoughtful, and i see the paradise hidden in the strands of the future and excitement that you see in this project. for a moment, i would have died to see the universe as you saw it.

you rest your elbows on the table, leaning your head against your hands and turning sideways to look at me. your dark cinnamon colored hair falls into your face and float slightly along the soft breeze that bites my skin and kills the warmth on my hands and face slowly. they waver like the tree branches in the park as autumn stripped the layers of their crowns away.

there's warmth in your empty eyes. you are a paradox that i'm not able to solve.

"i can write three of the poems... are you fine with two?"

you say it as a question but there is a core of steel under the honey and licorice in your voice, as if you were stating a fact.

"sure," i mumble shortly.

my nervous fingers fidget with the corners of my sketchbook.

your eyes land on the notebook. at the dull blue of it's cover, it's edges ripped and curled with the millions of times my fingers had brushed over them. they resembled an eroded valley with sides filled with dry gray dirt.

it is an ugly notebook.

you tilt your head, curiosity in your eyes.

"is that your sketchbook?"

i nod. my hair resembles the willow tree in the distance, it's silky, stranded branches shivering in the wind.

without a word, you extend your arm toward the sketchbook. your fingers brush them like the sunlight grazing against the ocean of faded and scratched blue.

"can i?" you whisper the words, as if they were a sacred prayer. your beige and emerald eyes are layered with shades of warmth enfolding the hollow tragedy of your mind.

your eyes are a graveyard filled with sunflowers and bones.

i let you take it. you open it carefully, as if it were an ancient, reed-based paper found in egyptian tombs. you flip to the page that separates the roughly drawn sketches from the rest of the notebook — the untouched paper.

the latest sketch is like a poem:

alice ran with her arms

spread wide / each finger

reaching up for invisible

balloons in the air / as if

they were brushing against

the edge of infinity

she ran

she wasn't running away

or toward anything / she didn't

have anywhere to go

so she ran

past rabbits and white

roses painted red / past

hourglasses and chambers

of tears / past tea parties

and cats living different

realities / past the edge

of the world /and when she

reached there

she flew

-[ 🌙 ]-