half of infinity.

We fell into infinity far too quickly, you and I. Me and You. But really, me, myself and I. We let the word forever roll into our dreams far too soon.

I fell first, up to my thighs in boiling black quicksand. You were still untouched, sitting safely above in a magnolia tree as you watched me drowning ever so slowly.

You couldn't reciprocate and I never understood why. "Love is like a cigarette," you would tell me, a pure excuse beneath hollowed clouds and filtered sunlight, "it burns hot and quick for a while until all you have left is the end."

[wait for him.] my poor little heart would say until I was sick to my stomach and felt infinity dissolve.

I packed my suitcase quickly, stuffed it full of shattered dreams I hoped to glue together again, a few mason jars full of lightning bugs and starlight, some bottles of sangria and the single memory of our first kiss. A Polaroid of your lips' technique that had never changed. A steady pressure, a simple unhurried brush, an uncertainty. Always an uncertainty.

But even after the fact when I burned that Polaroid into ashes and your memory became stardust. And then I sat still, waiting in that magnolia tree, waiting for that green-eyed boy to return to me, waiting for half of infinity.