It’ll Last

Tonight the cigarettes smell like sparklers.
I can’t tell if the sirens are in my music, or real life.
Your skin is periwinkle in the fading light,
and I’ve fallen in love with you,
again and again,
twelve times in the last half hour.
I don’t think I was meant to live in this city.
I think I was meant to love it, then set it free,
and go back to the city that
released me.
Sometimes we’re the birds
that know where is home.
You’re in a white shirt and you look like
a Greek statue.
I paint sunsets onto you.
Red in your hair, orange on your lips.
Violet on the tip of your nose.
If tonight lasts forever you can come with me.
We’ll get a house on the water,
grow zucchini, adopt dogs.
You’ll never stop playing piano,
and I’ll never stop laughing like asphalt.
Our skinned knees will never heal,
and we’ll have all the time we could ever steal.

—By Meghan Bennett