Goodbye sound of sliding screen door, and the look of your skin under those lights, dainty and dangling overhead, blues fading green and soon, or at least I thought, soon—you’d come waltzing out to that song we always play, always sing, always saying remember this one, and take from me the last I have to give.
Goodbye sweat-born ache, small apartment smelling of iridescence, and goodbye hand on my chest, slap across my face, kiss on the lips when I ask for one on the cheek.
Goodbye, goodbye, like a hymn, something slipped from the side of my mouth as I’m pretending not to watch you change. Nothing explicit, no nudity or pale revealing under shaky lamps. No, I’m often with my fingers before my eyes, you’re half spread just beyond me, like we’re dancing two separate edges of the night.
Go on now, pull closed the window, check the locks tight, until morning there’s only cool reflections across the pavement; go on now, good night, ease under your sheets, keeping time like a train station, and soon there’s only secrets left floating, a journey out of sync, I hear you whispering one step ahead of me,
Soon you’ll be calling to ask where are you now? Soon there’ll be nothing to explain, to mumble; nothing to slip beneath the cracked door.
Goodbye back stairs, natural curve as we pressed our mistakes together; goodbye look in your eye, sting of poison, shaved ice and two fingers vodka in a rocks glass.
Goodbye, soft call into the empty night;
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye—
Douglas has returned to the West, after years exploring the South and Northeast coasts. Besides a Bachelor’s degree in English, his experiences range from managing a boutique coffee shop to fitness video production. He prefers not to be in one state for too long, and maintains a keen respect for accuracy of statement. He has recent fiction publications in: Crime Factory Magazine, Sleet Magazine, and with Vagabondage Press.
